


What Monsters May Come

by melanie1982



Category: The X-Files
Genre: DoesNotGelWithCanon, F/M, MarySueAF, MulderIsAGod, Sex, TheTruthIsInHereLol, ridicfic, sorrynotsorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2019-11-27 21:40:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 22
Words: 23,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18199652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melanie1982/pseuds/melanie1982
Summary: Alison was marking time in the small town of Freeville, Virginia, waiting for the day she could start her adult life. Her entire life experience had been so.. ordinary.Then things got weird - like, super weird, super fast - and Alison learned that sometimes 'ordinary' isn't so bad..Any characters from X Files, I don't own. I own the original characters.I don't science. The science in this has the dumb, and I won't apologize for mistakes on police procedure, medical procedures, laws of physics, or anything else that isn't factually correct. My universe, my rules :)





	1. Chapter 1

X File #36589VA-X

Location: Freeville, Virginia, twenty miles outside Quantico

Date: July 2, 1999

Agents on scene: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully

Interview start time: 3.15pm

Mulder had been taking a quick nap at HQ when Scully's arrival had disturbed him. 'Disturbed' was a good word for it on multiple levels. Firstly, the literal disturbance of his sleep; secondly, the disturbing nature of the case; and thirdly, the effect Scully had on her partner, even during downtime. With the heat of summer rolling in, Mulder wondered how much longer they - or rather, he - could keep certain topics of conversation at bay. Pushing those thoughts aside for the moment, Fox pondered their assignment. He knew how the agency felt about their work, but he also knew that no other agents would want to deal with a small-town spook case on a Friday afternoon. As far as most staff at HQ were concerned, the weekend started at 5pm sharp, and nothing less than a direct nuclear threat would delay their departure for Margaritaville. Add to that the fact that Sunday was Independence Day, meaning it was a *long* weekend, and there was a snowball's chance in hell that anyone else was going to deal with this strange mess.

So it was that the two FBI agents found themselves taking the pleasant-if-dull drive from Quantico to the little town of Freeville. Neither of them could recall ever having heard of the town before, and yet the cookie-cutter layout of the streets, with the same box-houses, chain stores, and fast food dispensaries seen in so many communities across the nation, gave the pair a bland sense of deja vu.

The scene of the incident was the unimaginatively-named Freeville High, and the subject in question was a seventeen year old high school senior by the name of Alison Duvell. The police were on scene, having cordoned off the science lab, which was the eye of the storm. A local news van was idling out front, and as the agents had arrived, two more vans, each from a different station, had pulled up behind their car, blocking them in their spot. Opting to deal with that inconvenience later, the pair discreetly flashed their badges and entered the building, past a few mildly curious local law enforcement officers.

Once inside, Mulder and Scully had been escorted to the detention hall, where Alison was being monitored, flanked by two officers in identical metal folding chairs. Satisfied that the newcomers had the appropriate credentials, said officers had been relieved of their guard duties, no doubt thankful to be out of there. That left the two agents alone with the girl, and the interview could begin.

Scully set up her tape recorder, making sure the cassette was loaded correctly, pushing various buttons to test the batteries. Setting it on the table in plain sight, equidistant between herself and the subject, Scully heard Mulder clear his throat. How unprofessional of her; she had forgotten to introduce herself and try to build rapport with the girl.

Mulder broke the ice, extending his hand to the young woman, who hesitated before accepting the gesture. "Hello, Alison. My name is Special Agent Fox Mulder, and this is my partner, Special Agent Dana Scully. Do you prefer to go by another name or a nickname, like Ali?"

Alison relaxed slightly; Mulder could see it. "Just Alison." His hand felt cool and firm, and that comforted her. A little.

Scully mirrored her partner's intro, and Alison felt a different energy upon shaking the woman's hand. Not 'bad,' per se, just.. more aloof, somehow.

Alison knew that she had to tell the truth, but the truth in and of itself wasn't going to be enough. She was going to have to convince these two, a couple of experienced federal agents, that she was being honest with them, that she had nothing to hide, and that she was a victim here. It was a tall order for anyone, let alone a teenager who was almost as in the dark about the day's events as these two were.

The agents sat down, the table giving off a definite 'us' and 'them' vibe, representing the chasm of disbelief which Alison would have to cross. Scully spoke into the recorder, noting the time, date and location, and rattling off the names of the three people in the room. 

Alison took a deep breath in through the nose, held it for three beats, then exhaled slowly through the mouth. Every word counted. 

Scully went to ask the first question, but Alison had to take a chance.

"Before you ask me anything, I need you to know - I didn't kill him. I mean, I know he's dead - I saw him, after.. after it happened, - but I didn't do anything wrong. I don't know.. I don't know what happened. One minute, the man was on top of me, and the next, he was.. on the ground, not moving."

Mulder wondered what went through Scully's mind as she listened to the young girl's outburst. Scully knew that a man, still unidentified, was dead, and that his injuries were most consistent with those of radiation victims. Down the hall, mere yards from where the three of them sat, officers in hazmat suits were taking Geiger counter readings. He focused his gaze on the girl, hoping his voice would come out clear and with a hint of compassion.

"We're going to ask you questions about the incident, to try to get to the bottom of it. I know this is a difficult time for you, but, please, try to stick to the questions. At the end, if you feel like there's anything we've missed, or anything further you'd like to add, you'll have a chance to address that. Okay?"

Scully wondered, fleetingly, why the girl had opted to answer questions without an attorney, or even her parents, present. Most interview subjects who were that bold fell into one of two categories: either they were sociopaths, convinced of their ability to deceive, or they were telling the truth.

As the questions began, Scully found herself oscillating between the two possible explanations.

Mulder took careful notes during Scully's questions, jotting down angles he wanted to further explore, but by the time the cassette had spun out its reel, he was no more certain than his partner.


	2. Chapter 2

Interview details

Alison took a deep breath in through the nose, held it for three beats, then released it slowly through the mouth. She tried again, honing her focus on the agents seated across the table from her. The teen wanted to split her energy evenly between them, but the longer the interview went on, the greater her sense of fear became. The female agent was courteous, but Alison sensed that the woman was becoming increasingly convinced that the subject of this interview was a cold, calculating killer. One could learn to maintain a neutral tone or an open, sympathetic expression, but the eyes - the eyes never lied.

Alison shifted in her seat, feeling younger than her age and somehow inferior. It was unjustified to think of herself that way; in the past several weeks, she'd become a straight-A student, shocking all of her teachers. In fact, other areas of her life had begun to dramatically improve: her athletic ability, her sense of balance (she'd been a life-long klutz), her complexion, even her singing ability, landing her a solo at the upcoming graduation ceremony. Prior to the attack in the science lab, life had been going so well.

No. That wasn't quite right. There were the strange nightmares, enough to unsettle her upon waking, but not recalled in enough detail to analyze. She felt foolish talking about them, but the man - Mulder - had promised her a chance after the questions were finished, a chance to add anything she felt might help explain what had happened.

"These.. nightmares," Mulder pressed. "How long have they been happening?"

She frowned. "Pretty much every night for the past several weeks." The clock behind her ticked on towards six p.m. Her dad's shift would be over by now, and he'd probably get home by six-thirty and wonder where his daughter was. Would the incident be on the news? Did the local reporters have enough information to spin into a story?

Scully seemed 'over it,' ready to wrap up the interview, but as Alison detailed her odd night-terrors and strange physical symptoms, a new spark ignited in Mulder's eyes. He was almost.. excited, and Alison couldn't fathom it, other than to conclude that the man must really be into his job.

Other than a cursory once-over by the EMTs who showed up to collect the body, Alison hadn't received medical attention - but her symptoms had been the last thing on her mind as she'd fought for her life. Mulder took frantic notes as she rattled them off: headaches; a strange buzzing sound during moments of solitude; pain in her abdomen.. That last one, Alison had attributed to her cycle, and wondered if Mulder would come to the same conclusion. Would the agents think she might be pregnant? Oh, G-d..

Scully seemed more interested in Alison's apparent spontaneous healings of various minor afflictions than she was in the details of the attack. Alison had dealt with a mild curvature of the spine since childhood, one which had caused every item of clothing to slip down and out of place from her left shoulder, but a few weeks ago, the defect had inexplicable corrected itself - around the same time that the strange 'nightmares' had begun.

It was slightly jarring, one agent asking clinical questions, the other asking more probing ones. Must be the Bureau's version of 'good cop, bad cop,' she concluded.

Mulder pushed further, albeit gently. "Had you ever seen the man before today, Alison? Maybe in the neighborhood, or outside the school..?"

She shook her head no, and Scully motioned to the recorder, reminding the subject that she had to speak her answers aloud. "No. Never. I'm my parents' only kid; I've been taught to always look around, get a sense of my surroundings.." 

He asked a follow-up question about the alarm she carried, a small white case the size of a make-up compact. Alison explained that the alarm had a metal pin attached to a lanyard; removing the pin caused the alarm to emit an ear-splitting screech every three seconds for up to four hours, or until the pin was put back in place - whichever came first. She explained for the third - or was it fourth? - time that, yes, she was sure she had removed the pin, but the man, the attacker, had silenced it somehow.

"What makes you think he silenced it?"

It was a blunt question, but a fair one, and Mulder had voiced it with concern and curiosity, rather than being patronizing or accusatory.

"I just.. He must have. I test it once a week, you know, to see if the batteries are still good. I tested it yesterday, and it was fine, but today.. It didn't work."

Scully knew the alarm was being processed as evidence; she was banking on finding it had malfunctioned. Unfortunate, to be sure, but not paranormal. Technology was only as perfect as its makers, and its makers were far from perfect. 

The school still had no idea how the man had gained access to the building. So far, there was no trace of him on the CCTV footage, as if he had simply apparated himself into the lab.

"I'm not stupid," Alison offered. "I know how this must look. But I really don't know who he is, or why anyone would want to hurt me." She couldn't say 'kill me,' because that would make it real. 

That was the part neither agent could explain. One minute, a lone stranger was attacking a teenage girl, pinning her down to a lab station; the next minute, that same man was in a heap on the floor, burned from head to toe - not by flames, but by radiation - while the girl was unscathed.

Finally, Scully had shut off the recorder. Alison wondered if she was about to be arrested, or quarantined, or made to disappear.

"So what happens now?," she asked, her voice sounding small.

"I think you're headed for a period of observation at the hospital. Scully and I will check in with you later, okay, Alison?"

Something in her didn't want to lose sight of the two of them - Mulder in particular. "By myself? You're not gonna, you know, escort me?"

Mulder smiled weakly. "You're not under arrest, Alison. You'll be in good hands; a couple of the local officers will go with you and make sure your privacy is protected from the press. And I imagine your parents will meet you there. I'm sure they're worried about you."

Scully arched a brow. If SHE had a teenager, and that teenager had just been attacked, only for that attacker to end up dead from severe burns, she's find a way to get to her child, no matter how many guns or badges got in her way. 'Worried' would be an understatement.

"I hate hospitals," Alison said, so softly Mulder almost missed it. He didn't blame her; other than a baby being born into a loving family, few good things happened at hospitals. In fact, Mulder couldn't think of any other positive reason to go to one.

The officers, a man and a woman, offered cursory introductions before leading her to a waiting unmarked car beneath the makeshift shelter of a borrowed coat. They'd used a disarmed fire door, but a few reporters and lookie-loos were there all the same, Alison being rushed into the car unable to see anything but her feet on the ground beneath her. As the car drove away, Alison kept the coat over her face, even though it made her claustrophobic. Would the press figure out where she was heading? Would they be outside the hospital as she arrived? What a shitty, shitty day this was turning out to be. Still, she was glad to be alive and, as far as she knew, unharmed.

Alison had an eerie, nauseous feeling. Perhaps the shock of the attack was merely wearing off, and her emotions were getting the better of her body. That had to be it. I mean, she'd been through the worst of things now, hadn't she?

"I'm worried about her, Scully." 

Mulder watched his partner double-check that she had all of her belongings before leaving. "Hospitals are safe places, Mulder. The press won't get past the door, and her parents will be with her soon. We have work to do elsewhere."

He knew she was right. They had to follow procedure, to take comfort in the familiar aspects of an unfamiliar situation. There would be time to follow up with Alison in a few hours, after she'd been examined and had time to rest and gather her thoughts. Maybe she'd recall something useful, or come up with a valid theory as to what the hell her life had become and who was behind it all.

"Where are we headed now?," he asked, trying to shift his focus from the emotional to the rational, something he envied in his partner. Mulder wondered if Scully ever envied his ability to feel without logic getting in the way. He'd have to ask her sometime, as soon as he found the balls to do so.

"I figure we should talk to the adults who know her the best, see if they can shed light on the changes she's experienced lately."

"What about her friends, or her boyfriends?"

Scully turned to look at him. "That wouldn't take long. She doesn't have any. Apparently being smart and beautiful makes you really unpopular at Freeville High."

For the umpteenth time that day, Mulder felt sorry for the girl.

\------------------

At the hospital, Alison underwent a series of tests, starting with a nurse drawing multiple vials of blood for analysis, and ending with x-rays and an MRI. With each new procedure, the methodology became more invasive or restrictive, but the girl gave up trying to argue. Holding still in the MRI, she had a strong sense of deja vu, which confused her. She had never been through an MRI before, nor could she think why it felt so familiar. Once she emerged, Alison rubbed her wrists absentmindedly, an image of being bound flashing through her mind. No; not ropes. Metal. Strong, cold, unbreakable. Whatever the doctors knew or suspected might be wrong with her, the tests were labeled 'RUSH;' even so, Alison knew she'd be in the hospital at least overnight. The only 'comfort' she'd received from the staff was news that her mother was, indeed, en route to see her.

It had been a long, strange day, and the stress, combined with the (controlled) loss of blood to the nurse's needle left her tired. Alison must have dozed off, because when she next opened her eyes, it was dark. 

She turned to the chair beside her, expecting her mother to be there - but there was no one.

"I'm dreaming," she whispered into the blackness. "I must be. Or maybe they just didn't want to wake me. Maybe they just went to grab a coffee downstairs.."

She settled back against the pillow, willing herself to be calm, but something was threatening to come back to her, some awful message inside her mind, spoken to her without words -

"You are ours. Not theirs. You are ours."

Alison shook her head no against it, but it didn't dissipate. 

"Almost time. We are coming for you. You are ours."

A choking panic rose in her throat, and she let it out in a piercing scream.


	3. Chapter 3

Freeville General Hospital  
July 2, 1999  
9.52pm

Scully wanted desperately to rub the fatigue from her eyes, but she was always conscious - make that hyper-aware - of where her hands had been and what they'd been doing. The autopsy on the John Doe from Freeville High was almost complete; all Scully needed now was a signature from the local coroner. Her gloved hands would need a thorough decon before touching her face. A hot bath sounded like heaven, though Scully wondered if she'd have the energy to avoid dozing off in the tub.

She could already sense a change in the town's mood, marked by an uptick in admissions to the ER on the floor below. That night and the next would no doubt see a surge in victims of alcohol poisoning, DUI collisions, and ill-advised stunts, while Sunday's traffic would be primarily fire-work related burns and mishaps. Although Scully was normally a cautious sort, one or two adult beverages, to take away the taste of the day she'd just had, held a certain level of appeal.

She finished closing up what remained of John Doe, then cleaned her work-station as best she could. By the time those tasks were complete, the clock read 11.45pm. Where the hell was the coroner?

Like an angel, if angels could be less than innocent, Mulder's face appeared within the round frame of the observation window. Scully waved him in, glad to see a familiar face; when she realized what he was carrying, she was even happier about his arrival.

"What gifts I bear," he announced, laying a paper sheet on the nearest apparently sterile surface before pulling a number three combo from the bag with a flourish. Fox lined up the items like surgical instruments in a neat row, book-ending them with a sweating paper cup of diet soda and a Styrofoam one of hot coffee.

"I wasn't sure whether or not you wanted to stay awake, so I hedged my bets," Mulder teased.

Scully thanked him and chose the coffee, enjoying its fragrant steam, a wonderful contrast to the smell of death. It burned her on the first sip, but she hardly cared. She was grateful that *her* burn would heal, and that she was alive to experience it - unlike Mr. Doe..

The two of them ate in comfortable silence, the kind born of long days and nights in shared company. Mulder skimmed over Scully's autopsy report, his ability to read medical jargon nearly on a par with his partner's. Scully finished chewing a very unladylike mouthful of greasy fries just in time to notice her friend's puzzled expression.

"Not to criticize, doc, but isn't it standard practice to note the liver temp of the deceased?"

Scully, now comfortably full, wiped her hands futilely on a napkin. "That's correct. I would have, Mulder, but I couldn't find it."

"The thermometer?"

"The liver. Half the man's internal organs were.. missing."

Mulder began gathering up the detritus of their meal. Scully was struck in that moment just how domesticated it seemed, like a husband clearing the table after dinner. Then she reminded herself that they were not a couple, and that a hospital examination room was not a suburban dining room.. Definitely overworked, she concluded. 

"'Missing' as in destroyed by the radiation?"

She shook her head no. "There was no trace of liver cells or tissue, Mulder. No intestines, no bladder, no stomach. Heart and lungs were badly damaged, but present."

Mulder wanted to ask, but wondered whether he'd regret it. "The brain?"

Scully understood his hesitance. "Normal size, but definitely out of sync with his body. Judging by every other part of him, the man was only in his late twenties to early thirties, but his brain held so many neural pathways, it was as if he'd lived for centuries. There's nothing in any medical literature I've ever read to suggest that that could be a result of the radiation."

Mulder had an alternative theory. "Could it be that the man was young, but had learned and experienced so much in his short life that it would account for the extra brain imprints?"

"Since when are *you* the one coming up with more plausible, less monster-y explanations?" It was said in gentle jest, though as soon as Mulder had suggested it, Scully kicked herself for not thinking of it first.

"'Monster-y'? Is that a medical term?" He let the jest evaporate. "What about Alison? How'd that examination go?," Mulder asked.

Scully had to admit she hadn't gotten an update, being wrist-deep in Mr. Doe. "I'm not sure.. I'm still waiting on the coroner to get here so I can wrap this up. Then, if it's okay with you, I'd like to check in with her briefly before we knock off for the night."

Mulder felt a pang of concern for his colleague. She looked so tired. "I'll go see what I can find out."

Scully took the moment alone to go over the report once more. How had Alison not been harmed by the radiation that had killed this man? What had happened in that lab? 

Mulder returned with news, but it wasn't good. "Sit down, Scully."

She preferred to remain standing, suddenly feeling that her adrenaline was about to spike at whatever words came next. "Just tell me. Is it.. Is it Alison?" 

He shook his head no. "The coroner is one Diana Duvell. I should say 'was' Diana Duvell. Sheriff's department just found her car upside down in a ditch, one-vehicle accident. Mrs. Duvell was d.o.a. And get this - "

Scully raised a hand to her forehead, transferring salt and grease to her skin. "Let me guess - severe radiation burns to the body."

Mulder's face barely twitched, affirming.

"Great. A dead coroner, a dead John Doe, and a teenage girl who's already had the day from hell and has now lost her mother. What do we do, Mulder?"

"Two officers are en route to pick up Mr. Duvell from work, and another two are on their way here to speak with Alison."

Mulder frowned. "She needs to hear it from us, Scully. Just.. Jesus. Poor kid."

She knew he was right, but this was one of her least favorite parts of being a doctor-slash-federal-agent, even worse than coaxing information from the dead: bringing news of bereavement to the living.


	4. Chapter 4

As Mulder and Scully arrived at Alison's room, the on-duty officer - where was his partner? - was in a foul mood.

"Man, I hope the Bureau trained you guys to handle crazies, 'cuz we got a situation in here."

Scully addressed him. "Where's your partner? We specifically requested a two-officer detail."

"In there," he gestured with a backward jerk of his thumb. The lights were on in the room, and Alison was wide-eyed with fear, though she seemed a far cry from 'crazed.' "The nurses needed back-up."

"What makes you think she's a cr - , uh, a threat to herself or others?," Mulder asked.

"She woke up screamin', rambling about voices in her head that were threatening to 'come get her'."

Scully had heard enough. She let herself into the room, with Mulder only a step behind.

Once inside, it became obvious Alison had been given something to calm her down. On one level, Scully knew it wasn't good for a patient's recovery to experience acute distress (not to mention the effect her screaming would have on the other residents), but under the circumstances, acting out was, well, understandable. On another level, the FBI agent level, having a witness out of it on any substance, prescribed or not, posed a new set of challenges. 

"Sedation? You sedated our only witness?," Scully asked, incredulous.

The nurse scowled, sizing up the interlopers. "Not a sedative - a tranquilizer. Point five milligrams of lorazepam. It won't make her sleep, but it will keep her calm. See? Wide awake." She crossed her arms over her chest, standing her ground. This could get ugly.

Alison looked up at Scully with recognition, then looked at Mulder with something like relief.

Mulder brushed up his best bedside manner. "Thank you, nurse. We'll call you if we need anything else. And thank you, Officer.."

The woman addressed the agent. "Franko. You guys got it from here?"

Mulder gave a weak smile. "Yes, I think so."

Officer Franko, clearly relieved to be excused, left the room to resume her post.

Scully pulled up a chair, scooting it to the halfway point of Alison's bed. Mulder followed suit, taking up a spot closer to the foot end of things.

She looked at each of them by turns, trying to focus, to read their faces. "Dad should've been here by now."

The girl noticed the confusion between the agents, telling her they didn't know about the delay. They'd have to ask someone later; there was a more pressing issue to address.

Alison blinked several times in rapid succession, probably a side effect of the tranq. "It's Mom, isn't it? Something's happened, I just know it. She should've been here already."

Scully waded in. "Alison, there's no easy way to tell you this. .. Your mom's been in an accident. The first responders did all they could, but.. she didn't make it. I'm sorry."

The girl's chin quivered, but the tears wouldn't come. Mulder wanted to reach for her hand, but he was too far from it, making it awkward and impractical, as well as possibly too familiar.

"What.. What happened, exactly?" There was a throbbing behind her eyes, deep in her skull, and Alison felt a wave of nausea, along with the sense of the voice returning.

"We're not sure of the details, just that her car was found in a ditch. Nobody else was involved in the accident," Mulder said, then felt stupid for it.

"You're wrong." At first, Scully was afraid that Alison was refuting her mother's death, but she soon put that fear to rest. "Someone else was involved. It's them. It's whoever did this to me, whoever sent that man to my school.."

Scully looked at Mulder, concern in her eyes. "Why do you think so? Have you remembered something, Alison?"

"Not in words. It's in.. feelings, and pictures in my head. The voice - it isn't really a voice. It's just a message, like it's alive. It doesn't need words."

Mulder leaned in. "What's the message?"

"It said, 'You are ours. Not theirs. You are ours.' Then it said it's almost time, that it's coming for me. Now it got Mom.. It's my fault."

She looked so helpless, and yet so achingly beautiful in her distress. Mulder got up from his chair, passing behind Scully to be close to the girl, to hold her hand. The instant his skin touched hers, he felt a jolt of something, keeping him in place. He crouched down, slightly breathless from the contact, but unwilling to let himself go into a full fall to the floor.

Scully tried to reassure the girl that she was safe here, that they would make inquiries about her father's whereabouts, and that none of this was her fault, but her attempts at comfort were cut short by the arrival of a disheveled and distraught newcomer.

"Alison.. Oh, baby girl, thank God you're okay."

"Dad!"

He approached from the unoccupied side of the bed, pulling his daughter tight, almost out of the bed by the force of his hug. Mulder's hand was now free, though it had never, technically, been restrained. The absence of the girl's touch was like ice, and Mulder rubbed his hand, confused. Scully, noticing her partner's increasingly odd behavior, was also puzzled.

"Mr. Duvell.. I'm Agent Scully, this is Agent Mulder. We were assigned to your daughter's case."

He gave them a hard stare, not concealing his mistrust. "There is no case. Some asshole attacked my girl, and now he's dead. Is she being charged with anything?"

Scully had to admit that she wasn't. 

"Good. Then if you don't mind, or even if you do, I'll be taking my daughter home where she belongs."

Mulder felt their best chance at solving the mystery being snatched away from them by a well-meaning parent.

"Mr. Duvell, I realize this must be an incredibly difficult time for you both, but it's really best if your daughter stays here, at least for tonight, for observation. The test results should be - "

Mr. Duvell was already hitting the nurse call button. "I thank you both for your time, Agents, but we can wait for those results at home. My family's been through enough today." Turning to Alison, he softened. "You wanna go home, sweetie, sleep in your own bed?"

She sniffled, still unable to shed a tear. "The nurse gave me some kind of tranquilizer; it won't let me cry."

He turned to the agents again, seething with contempt. "See what the wonders of modern medicine have done here? Her mother's gone, and she can't cry because of some pill?" After a pause, he urged Alison to go into the en suite bathroom and get dressed. 

"They took my clothes for evidence. I don't have anything to wear," she admitted.

Mr. Duvell pulled three twenties from his wallet before kissing his daughter on the forehead. "I'll run down to the gift shop and buy you something. Don't worry about shoes; it's only a short walk to the car."

"Okay," she said, uncertainty in her voice.

Mark stood up to his full height, facing the agents. "I'll be back as soon as I can. I'd like you two to wait outside."

His tone suggested that this was going to happen, whether it was the easy way or the hard way. Mulder and Scully exchanged a look, and knew they'd have to concede, at least for now.

"We'll be in touch," Mulder said, more to Alison than to her father.

"Again - sorry for your loss," Scully said, and meant it.

The two agents were soon alone in the room. 

"Isn't there anything we can do to stop them, Scully? He could take off with her, head to Timbuktu, and we'll never hear from them again."

Scully shook her head. "Short of making up charges and arresting the girl, no, Mulder, we can't stop them. He is her legal guardian, and he can control our access to her." She paused. "But I don't think he'll disappear with her, at least, not yet."

Mulder considered this. "His wife's arrangements?"

Scully had something tickling at the back of her mind, and was desperately trying to pin it down. "It's more than that. The way he reacted, with so much.. anger. I think he's gonna stick around for a while. He wants us to leave, but I think we've got some time."

Mulder was stunned. "A hunch? From you?"

"Until the test results come in, Mulder, it's all we've got to keep us going. Let's talk about it in the morning, after a power-nap and some coffee."

Mulder knew she was right, that there was nothing to investigate and no one to interrogate at this time of night. Still, despite their exhaustion, neither of them had an easy sleep.

\-------------------------------------------

When Mulder arrived at the hospital, Scully was taking notes from Alison's lab results, which had arrived first thing. He could tell from her face that she'd found something unusual. 

"What's the good news, doc?" Mulder had brought coffee - again - and Scully made a mental note that she owed him for it. 

"Her hormone levels are off the charts, and she hasn't menstruated in over a month."

Mulder had to ask. "Is she sexually active? Could it be due to pregnancy or birth control?"

"No, neither. And these levels are abnormally high, like she's been pumped full of fertility drugs."

Her partner was incredulous. "What doctor would administer fertility treatments to a teenage girl?"

"I don't know. What I *do* know is that she has hundreds of eggs, Mulder, and they're maturing at an alarmingly rapid rate. The pressure must be unbearable; it's no wonder she's lethargic. These elevated levels can't be sustained for long, or.."

"Or she'll die." Mulder knew that look, having seen it far too many times. He paused to let the information sink in. "So what's the recommended course of treatment?"

"Well, if it was just a hormone imbalance, I'd say some hormonal birth control, maybe testosterone treatments, but with the eggs posing the risk of ovarian rupture, I'd say her best chance is to have a bilateral oophorectomy."

Mulder surprised himself by knowing what Scully was talking about. "Won't that throw her into menopause? At seventeen, Scully?" He couldn't imagine the physical and psychological trauma that might induce.

"It's either that, or let her rupture. Even with surgery, Mulder, her risk of several types of cancer are going to be exponentially increased due to the hormones. Her future fertility is hardly the main concern here."

He couldn't let it go. "She's just endured a violent attack and the loss of a parent in the space of less than forty eight hours, and now she's, what, going to be spayed just to add insult to injury?"

Scully closed her eyes for a long moment. "I can do a little more research, Mulder, but I'm not optimistic that I'll find an alternative. Speaking as a doctor, priority number one is to save the patient's life."

Mulder didn't like it, but he knew it was true. "Yeah. I guess the quality of that life is of secondary importance."

"I'm sorry."

There was no use in arguing, and at any rate, there was no time. "Her body is damaged internally, her mental state is fragile at best, and whatever danger she was in before is clearly still an issue. What's the next stop, Scully?"

Scully was packing up her notes and finishing a sip of coffee. "I'm headed to Alison's pediatrician's office. I need to pull her records from at least the past two months, maybe longer, see if I can figure out what's causing all these anomalies, and how any doctor missed all of these issues. As an added bonus, getting the records won't involve engaging with Mr. Duvell."

"The man is grieving, and he's worried about his daughter."

"I still say something odd is going on with him, and until I can prove it, we'll just have to agree to disagree."

Mulder wondered whether their respective hypotheses on what exactly was going on were going to converge, and, if so, when.


	5. Chapter 5

July 3, 1999  
9.13am  
The Pediatric Practice of Drs. Moreno, Klein, and Wallerman

Freeville, VA

It's never a good sign when you arrive on scene to serve a subpoena for evidence, only to find three fire trucks parked askance in the front lot.

Scully approached the fire chief, flashing her badge, Mulder a step behind. Before they could launch into their introductions, the man spoke. 

"Special Agents Scully and Mulder. I'm Fire Chief Jenkins. We've been expecting you. I tried to reach you before you left the hospital, but I'm guessing you'd already left."

Expecting them? "Why expecting us?," Mulder queried.

"Just figured with the girl's father being uncooperative, you'd come here for answers. Come with me - and put these on," said Chief Jenkins, handing each agent a respirator mask.

With a shared shrug, the agents followed the chief, situating their masks into place.

Bypassing the charred portion of the waiting area, now decorated with melted plastic blocks and curled scraps of what were once children's books, the agents found themselves staring into a dark chasm.

"My God. What is that?," Scully asked.

"Some kind of underground storage room. I already called the town hall; no record of a permit for the construction, and it would definitely up the property value here tax-wise."

The agents stared, confused.

"My daughter's the county property tax assessor," Jenkins explained.

Jenkins went down first, proving to the apprehensive agents that the floor was stable. "Already had the guys check it out with a walk-thru. The fire started on the upper level, aka the only official level, and we put it out in time to preserve the scene. Come on down."

A sturdy hand reached out to assist Scully, who was thankful she'd worn dress pants rather than a skirt that day. Mulder brought up the rear.

"Pretty creepy stuff, guys. Looks like the doctors - or at least one of them - had some real interesting side-hustle going on down here."

The agents shined their flashlights to compensate for the lack of power. 

"How soon do you think it'll be back on? The electricity, that is," Mulder wanted to know.

"Any minute now. The city guys do good work, even on a weekend. Now that we know the fire's out, we - "

The lights hummed back to life, illuminating the size and scope of the place.

"Are those.. Are those freezers?" 

Scully rested the back of her hand against one of the metal trash-can-shaped objects. "Still cold. Did they have a generator set up?"

Jenkins nodded, affirming.

Scully, snapping a pair of gloves into place, worked the control panel, de-pressurizing the lid and allowing it to open. Mulder stood beside her, watching in awe as his partner pulled out one glass vial, then another. "These can't be what I think they are..," she muttered under her breath.

Jenkins, remembering himself, made his excuses. "This place is givin' me the creeps. Just give a shout when you're done down here, and I'll make sure we give you a hand."

With that, Jenkins hauled himself up and out of the hidden basement with a practiced dexterity, leaving the agents alone.

"These are ova. I'd bet on it. But, why? None of the pediatricians are licensed to practice fertility medicine, and it's a very specialized field."

"Look at all of these freezers. There must be thousands of test tubes here, Scully. It's like.. like.."

"Like someone was planning to breed an army," Scully said, horrified.

"An invasion from within. The ultimate Trojan horse. I'm betting there are other kids like Alison, ones of questionable parentage, being experimented on and allowed to mature until the time is right.."

Scully opened another one of the cryo-freezers, carefully removing one of the test tubes. "Testing all of these could take weeks, Mulder, and we may not have that long. There's also the ethical quandary, knowing that any interference with these eggs could damage or destroy them."

"They can't be returned to their source, Scully, and, not owning a uterus myself, I may be underqualified to speak on this, but I'm pretty sure no woman in her right mind would want their eggs harvested and stored indefinitely without their knowledge or consent."

"You're right, Mulder. I just.. Catholic guilt. It's a thing."

The space was a fertility clinic in microcosm, with all the latest high-tech equipment you'd need to obtain or implant eggs - except, apparently, for the lack of sperm.

She was adjusting a microscope and prepping a slide for sample 001. Mulder drew closer to take a peek.

"Anything interesting?"

"Well, the eggs seem to be potentially viable. Their viability and unknown origin are the horrifying part. The comforting part - they're *just* eggs. No embryos."

Mulder knew that would allay some of his partner's guilt. "Eggs won't hatch unfertilized. As of right now, these are just cells, no different to skin cells or hair. No sperm, no new life."

She nodded, exhaling. "I'm gonna need a team of helpers on this. There's no telling how many women have been victims, how many are out there with no idea that their eggs are in a stranger's hands."

"If they're like Alison, they may have some idea that they've been victimized - they just won't have the details."

"That's what I'm afraid of. And with Mr. Duvell acting so hostile, and with grief as a justifiable explanation for being uncooperative, we could lose days, even weeks."

Mulder thought it over. "When is her birthday? Once she's eighteen, there's nothing to legally stop her from cooperating, Scully."

"I know that, but I don't think we have that much time. This is getting weirder by the minute, and we still don't have any idea who attacked our victim or why."

He looked around the room once more. "I wonder how many of these are Alison's."

Scully shuddered. "I'm going to call the hospital, see if they can spare me a lab tech or two. You, you should find Alison's medical records, assuming they haven't conveniently burned up, and.."

She was getting overwhelmed. Mulder stepped up. "I'm on it." Peering up through the hole in the floor - ceiling - whatever, Mulder hollered, "Chief Jenkins? I'm ready for a hand up now, please."

Like magic, two fire officers reached down and hoisted him up, back into the world of the living. "Would you fellows mind helping me dig through the rubble for a specific patient's records?"

"Sure thing. We lost the first three filing cabinets, but the other two are still intact."

"What are the odds they weren't alphabetized?," Mulder thought sardonically.


	6. Chapter 6

Mulder's new friends helped him jimmy open the locked file cabinets containing the records of the clinic's patients.

The first three cabinets' contents were a total loss, but the fourth was intact. Unfortunately, the Duvell girl's records weren't in it.

"Last one," he muttered under his breath, leafing through the manila folders in the fifth cabinet. When he got to 'X', he found that there was a small stack of papers, none of whose subjects began with that letter. The documents were on a number of patients, and Mulder noted that each patient was identified only by their initials and date of birth. Of particular interest to him was a pair of x-rays, one of which showed a slight but definitely noticeable curvature of the spine, with the other x-ray showing that same spine without the curvature. The patient ID was 'A.D 8/11/81.'

What were the odds that, in a small town, in a small clinic, there would be more than one patient with the same initials, date of birth, and doctor?

Looking again, he saw that the other patients in the file had also been born on August 11, 1981. As Mulder dug deeper, going over the fourth cabinet's contents one more time, he found an unusual number of children born on that date. What the heck had been in the water in Freeville during November of 1980? Yeesh.

Hazmat employees showed up to test for radiation, forcing Scully to temporarily abandon her work in the hidden lab. She joined him in going over the files. The last cabinet had a hidden panel, behind which was a stack of birth certificates - including Alison's.

"Mulder, if this is Alison's file, then she's not who we thought she was."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean, her mother's blood type was A positive, and her father's is O positive. According to this, Alison's blood type is B positive."

"Okay, my punnett square recall's a little off, Scully. Can you break it down for me?"

She looked at him, her face radiating patience under pressure. "It's a physical impossibility for her to be their biological child."

"She was adopted? Or maybe it's a switched-at-birth scenario? Hospitals make mistakes, Scully; who knows what could've happened. It's rare, but hardly an X file."

"Well, that's what I thought at first, but, if she is adopted, it was probably illegally. This birth certificate is signed by Dr. Wallerman, but it's a forgery; there's no watermark. If the Duvells had gone home with the wrong baby, that still wouldn't explain the faked document. Besides, this says she was born at home, delivered by midwife."

The police were now on the scene, shepherding the agents away from the damaged building. Apparently, Hazmat's equipment had registered unsafe levels of radiation, so only emergency personnel were going to be granted access until the situation was sanitized.

"Do you think it's odd, Scully, that the good doctors just happened to be enjoying a long weekend when their clinic caught fire, sparing not only their lives, but the lives of all of their patients?"

She joined him in the sarcasm. "It's certainly a stroke of luck that no one was hurt. Almost like God had a plan."

Mulder examined the building over his shoulder. "I dunno about God, but somebody sure did. I need to try to contact the families of some of these patients, and you need to try to get answers from any of the doctors running this clinic. My hunch is that at least one of them wanted this place, particularly the 'lab of playing God', to disappear, but we need more information."

"I don't understand the record-keeping method or the secret room underneath the clinic. I don't understand how Alison isn't sick from radiation exposure, or how her spine went from malformed to normal in the space of a few weeks, without treatment, after years of causing issues. I feel like we're finding more and more questions instead of answers."

"It'll all tie together somehow. It usually does," Mulder offered hopefully.

Chief Jenkins headed over with an update.

"I just got the word over the radio. Dr. Moreno and Dr. Klein are out of town, but Dr. Wallerman's in the ER."

"Was he in an accident?," Scully asked, thinking of Mrs. Duvell, and hating the mental images of her injuries.

Jenkins shook his head no. "Drove himself there, then collapsed at the entrance. He's pretty bad, vomiting and rambling about being attacked by a mystery assailant."

Faint worry lines marred his partner's face. She didn't want to ask what his chances were; Jenkins' face and tone spoke volumes.

Mulder tried to help his partner focus. "I know it's against your nature as a doctor, Scully, but you need to be an agent now and press him for information while there's still time. If Alison wasn't who we thought, or if her parents were keeping huge secrets, we need to know. It could lead us to the identity of her attacker, maybe even a motive. And if Dr. Wallerman really was attacked, we need to know if there's a pattern."

Scully sighed. "I know. I just.. If it's radiation burns, he'll need heavy sedation, probably skin grafts.."

"I know you can do this, Scully. Call me with an update."

She nodded, steeling herself for the unpleasant task ahead of her. Mulder was counting on her, and Alison deserved to know the truth, whatever that was. Why hadn't her parents told her that she wasn't of their blood? 

What were they protecting her from?

\------------------------------------------------

At the hospital, Scully was given disposable scrubs and a facemask before being ushered to the ICU. The nurse, still full of energy in as her shift entered its second hour, was polite, but less than optimistic about the doctor's prognosis.

"He's pretty out of it," the young woman explained. "I wouldn't be letting you see him at all, except for the badge and the fact that, well.."

Scully finished the thought. "The fact that there may not be much time."

The plastic curtains parted, and Scully felt chills racing along her skin. There was Dr. Wallerman, looking shriveled and small in the sterile bed. 

"I won't stay long," she murmured to the nurse, who took that as her cue to excuse herself.

Scully approached the man, and although she knew it was insane, she fancied that she could feel heat emanating from the burns, even through his bandages. Judging by the bandages' number and scope, the burns were significant.

"Dr. Wallerman?"

The face turned towards her, his cloudy eyes clearing for a moment. When he made no other acknowledgement of her presence, Scully introduced herself.

"I'm Agent Dana Scully of the FBI. My partner and I are here working on a case involving one of your patients - Alison Duvell. Do you remember her?"

He did not move, but his eyes flickered with some emotion Scully couldn't pin down. Finally, his voice wheezed out a 'yes.'

"Dr. Wallerman, there was a fire at your clinic this morning. Luckily, no one was hurt. Unusual levels of radiation were detected on scene, but before it was closed off, my partner and I found some unusual patient records in your files."

He was looking at her with a mixture of fear and resentment, but he did not protest.

"Were you aware of the clinic's... violations of the zoning ordinances?"

He almost nodded, but it hurt, the motion stopping with a jerk. "My.. lab. Yes."

Scully felt a fresh wave of chills. "Did your partners know?"

The man had leaned back against the pillow, his eyes so utterly still that, for a moment, Scully was sure he had stopped breathing. "They had.. nothing to do with.. that side.. of things."

She hated having to press him, but the man seemed willing, perhaps eager, to talk. Keeping secrets had clearly taken a toll on his psyche.

"You're.. a doctor." He stated it, rather than asking; it caught her off guard. Had she introduced herself as Dr.? Scully was sure she hadn't.

"I am."

He almost smiled. "Then.. you know what it was. What I .. kept there."

She was horrified, yet thrilled at the same time. Was he going to confess something pivotal which would blow this case wide open? "Why? Why do it in secret?"

He met her gaze as if he hated to do so, but could not bear to look away. "My practice. Majority partner. My.. research. Is it.. destroyed?"

The man must be delirious. If he survived, he could be facing all sorts of criminal charges, he'd definitely lose his license to practice medicine, and he'd probably be attacked again by whoever wanted to silence him. That was IF he survived - and he was worried about his cache of frozen ova?

"They are the.. ones. The ones I helped create."

Was he referring to the unfertilized eggs, claiming he'd made them in a lab? Impossible. As if sensing Scully's train of thought, he spoke again.

"The children. The Duvell girl.. and the others. All had.. her birthday."

'Had'? Past tense? "Why all the same birthday?"

Dr. Wallerman seemed to weaken beneath the weight of some difficult memory. "I lost a child.. That was her.. her birthday. She.. vanished."

Scully had to grip the railing of the hospital bed. Vanished?

"Your partner.. is a man?"

Scully affirmed it.

"He mustn't get close to.. her. To Alison. She's.. different. The only one.. who made it. Others.. failed."

Dr. Wallerman opened his mouth to speak again, but a foul effluence emerged instead, a thick bracken which choked him and dribbled down the front of his bandaged torso. Scully hit the nurse call button, but it was superfluous, as the doctor's vitals triggered a code blue alarm.

As medical staff rushed in, Scully was ushered out.

"I'm a medical doctor," she protested.

"You're not HIS doctor!," a male nurse retorted.

Scully watched powerlessly as the team performed compressions on the man's burned and bleeding chest, wincing as she imagined his agony. When she realized the man didn't move or emit any sounds of pain, Dana feared the worst.

Regardless of the team's efforts success or failure, it was clear that Scully would get no more information from Dr. Wallerman that day.

She needed to find Mulder, hopeful that he'd gotten something, anything, for them to go on.


	7. Chapter 7

Mulder was at the county records office when Scully caught up with him, being supervised by two uniformed officers and a very put-out county clerk.

"You're here going through files on a Saturday; that's not a good sign," she guessed.

Mulder held up a thick stack of paper, waving it with flair. "These are the missing-person reports and/or death certificates for the other patients of Alison's doctors. Well, the ones who share a birthday with her, anyway."

Scully's stomach dropped. "That'll save time on tracking them down for interviews. Mulder, I need to talk to you about some things Dr. Wallerman said."

Mulder walked a few paces away from the others, out of earshot. "What did he have to say for himself?"

"Not much; he was struggling to speak at all, and then he coded. Before that, I managed to gather that it was his clinic; he claims the other two docs didn't know about the lab, or at least didn't have access to it. There was half a story about his daughter who 'vanished' - his word; apparently that's why he arranged for so many local kids to be born on the same day. Was there anything about that in the files?"

Mulder confirmed it. "The shared birthday, yeah. Scully, vanished as in how? Ran away from home? Kidnapped?"

Scully was feeling nauseous and dizzy, but she forced herself to focus. "That part didn't quite make it out before the black vomit did. So we've got no way of talking to the other patients, no way of talking to Wallerman, at least for now, and.." There was something else she needed to remember; it seemed important. "He said you should stay away from Alison."

Mulder's brows arched in surprise. "How'd that come up?"

"He asked if my partner was a man, and told me to make sure you stay away from her. Something about her being 'special,' that she 'made it through' where others failed.."

Scully trailed off, and Mulder grabbed her by the elbow as she began to topple. "Hey, hey, hey, easy, easy." Over his shoulder, "I need some help over here!" Back to his partner, "It's okay, Scully. Everything's okay."

He eased her body down to the floor, supporting her head with his arm as she drifted in and out of consciousness and hoping to God she didn't start vomiting up black goo.

Mulder had to let go of her in order for the EMTs to load her onto a stretcher, but he held her hand in the ambulance.

"If it's contagious..," one medic warned him.

"I'll take that chance," he shot back, and that was the end of the discussion. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

Mulder was by her side for all but the most invasive tests, when decorum dictated that he give her privacy. When, at last, he had to take a break to stretch his legs and clear his head, Mulder ran into Alison in the hallway outside of the cafeteria.

She looked at him intently, but did not seem surprised to see him there.

"I came to see Dr. Wallerman, but they said he's not allowed visitors right now," she offered, answering a question he hadn't asked.

At least, Mulder thought, that meant that the man was still alive. Barely, perhaps, but alive.

"I see. Is, uh.."

She shook her head, looking for a brief moment like the shy teenager she ought to be. "Dad's at work. I don't think he can stand being at the house right now."

"In case I didn't say it clearly before: I'm truly sorry for your loss."

Alison nodded.

"Do you want a cup of coffee or anything?," he offered, purely out of concern. So he told himself.

"I'd better not. If Dad found out.."

Mulder's hopes deflated. "Right. Well, in that case, I'll be on my way."

He turned, making it a few steps before she called after him.

Mulder held his breath. "Yes?"

"Did.. Did you see him? I mean, how bad..? They won't really tell me anything. He was there when I was born; he meant a lot to my folks. And to me."

Mulder tried to keep his expression neutral. "Seems like each of us needs information from the other. Wanna make a trade?"

A hint of mischief flashed in her eyes, then vanished. "What do you need to know?"

He headed towards the cafeteria, indicating she should follow. To his amazement, she did so, keeping a safe distance of a few feet.

They settled at a corner table, and the exchange began.


	8. Chapter 8

Alison provided more details about her nightmares, or, as Mulder was increasingly convinced, visitations. Scully would've most likely attributed the girl's strange experiences to high hormone levels, or even to grief, but Mulder wasn't convinced. The young woman detailed multiple episodes of finding herself standing outside of her house in the middle of the night, which wouldn't be so unusual in and of itself - except for the fact that her parents' home had a top-of-the-line security system, and her 'sleepwalking' episodes never triggered the alarms.

"What would your parents do when they'd find you outside with no memory of how you got there?," Mulder asked, followed by another sip of bilge-water hospital coffee.

She looked into her own murky cup, as if expecting to find answers, or perhaps simply to fortify her nerves. "They'd just take me back inside and send me to bed. The first few times, they thought I'd been sneaking out, but the security company came and tested the alarms.. There's no way I could've disarmed them, and they were working just fine." She pulled out the new personal alarm her father had given her, dangling it above the table. "Just like my old one. Let's hope this one works," she said, and Mulder felt uneasy.

"From what I've heard, the alarm from the day of the attack was tested and is in perfect working order." He waited, gauging her reaction. A mild flicker of interest was his only reward.

"That figures. I've had a lot of mechanical failures lately. It's one of the reasons dad doesn't want me to drive; newer cars seem to go haywire when I'm at the wheel. They just didn't want to discuss any of the strange accidents or malfunctions I seem to find myself in. Like they were in denial."

Mulder paused, hesitant to tread on sensitive ground. "Did you mom drive a newer car?"

Alison nodded. "Yeah. I thought about that. I never noticed anything going weird around her, but maybe.. Maybe I caused it somehow."

This he couldn't allow; this line of thinking was a road to nowhere. "You weren't there. We still don't know what happened. You mustn't blame yourself."

The tears shimmered, making her eyes seem brighter. "I don't know what to think. What if the people who are after me got to her? And now my doctor.."

Something occurred to him then. "Did you ever talk with any of the other patients at the clinic? There were a lot of kids there who shared a birthday - yours."

She blinked. "I did think it was kind of weird. I knew a couple of them; they were in my class. We'd see each other for our annual back-to-school physicals. I should've known something bad was coming when the first two disappeared and the third one killed himself."

Mulder startled. "Do you recall his name?"

"Peter something, something Polish, I can't pronounce it right. He was kind of a geek, didn't have a lot to say."

Mulder hadn't seen suicide listed as a cause of death on any of the certificates at the county office, although he did recall one boy's death being attributed to a fall. "What makes you think it was suicide?"

Alison looked right at him, sitting up straighter in her chair. "I think he heard the voice, too, or the not-voice, as I call it. He would stop what he was doing and just stare off into space, like he was listening. I'm thinking.. I'm thinking he wanted to escape, so he took the only way out that he could see." She paused. "I've thought about it, too."

Mulder was horrified. "No matter how bad things may seem, they can always get better. I'm sure your mom and Dr. Wallerman would want you to keep going."

She settled back into her seat, putting more distance between them. "You're talking about him like he's already dead."

He realized it was true. "He's not doing well. The last I heard, he wasn't responding to treatment and was headed for surgery. I know that isn't what you want to hear, Alison."

"Was he burned? Was it like with mom?"

Mulder considered sparing her, but she was so earnest, so lost. "He claimed he was attacked. They found him just outside the ER doors, having driven himself here. It's being investigated."

"You didn't answer my question - not really."

"Okay. Yes, he had radiation burns."

She looked down at her skin - whole; supple; alive. "So why didn't I burn? Why aren't the men in suits from E.T storming Freeville and dragging me off to be tested and dissected, to figure out what makes me different?"

He wanted to help her. He wanted the answers, more than she could possibly understand. "That's why my partner and I are here. We're trying to figure all of that out, to help in any way we can."

"I'm dangerous. Maybe you shouldn't help. Maybe you should stay away."

Mulder stopped cold. Her tone and demeanor had shifted, and he got the distinct feeling that someone or something else was speaking for her. Through her. 

"Alison? You feeling okay?"

She snapped out of her daze. "Yeah. It's just been a weird couple days."

He wanted to suggest to her that her strange experiences were being artificially induced by aliens. He wanted to hold her hand, or even hold all of her, for mutual comfort. He wanted things he couldn't begin to admit to himself.

"Thank you for talking with me. I hope it doesn't get you into trouble at home."

She shrugged. "I feel like I can trust you. Is that nuts? Dad's over-protective, and I get that - but with you, I just feel.. I don't know."

Was she feeling it, too? The sense that they were supposed to be around each other? Where did THAT thought come from?

"If you need to get in touch," he said, offering her another business card. She took it, and the merest brush of her fingers on his made his body react. As they rose from the table, Mulder noticed every other male in the room noticing her, and he couldn't fathom it. Not that she wasn't attractive - just, why so much focus on one girl? She wasn't dressed up or made up; it didn't make sense.

"You gonna be okay to get home?"

Alison nodded. "Yeah. I've got a bus pass. Buses tend to be safe for me." A weak half-smile punctuated her teenage bemusement at her recent string of bad luck. 

Mulder felt a pang of guilt for staying away from Scully for this long, but he knew she'd want him to keep working the case. His head was in the right place.

Unfortunately for him, his head wasn't the only part of him involved.


	9. Chapter 9

By the time Mulder made it back to her room, Scully was awake.

"Good morning, sunshine," he breezed, hoping she was in a good mood.

"The nurses kept asking me about my cute husband," she said, almost accusingly. "What exactly happened while I was unconscious?"

He wanted to tease her, to make up some story about how she'd begged him to marry her on her deathbed, about a hospital chaplain showing up and performing the ceremony as she drifted in and out of consciousness, but he took the moral high road.

"I'll tell you later," he teased.

She put a hand to her forehead. "How much time did I lose?"

He reassured her. "A few hours. I got to talk to Alison again."

Scully arched a brow. "Oh? How'd that go?"

He filled her in on the strange sleep-walking episodes, the concern Alison showed for her doctor, the kids who shared her birthday, and the odd accidents and near-misses which seemed to follow the girl. Mulder found himself relating the way that men seemed to react to the girl, wishing he could shut his mouth, but finding he wasn't quite as in control as he'd like to be.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about that, Mulder. The way you.." She stopped, then tried again. "I know you're a professional. You have a way of focusing on the task at hand, while being.. gentle and sensitive about it."

"A good bedside manner?," he offered, and she nodded.

"I sense a 'but' coming."

Scully shifted in her bed. "You seem to respond to this girl in an emotional way. At first I thought it was because she reminded you of your sister, or because you were hoping this was all some big alien experiment, but now I'm not so sure that's it. I think the way you look at her and talk about her.. shows a less-than-objective interest in this case."

Mulder's jaw tightened, though not in anger. "Spit it out, doc."

"Very well. I think you're attracted to her, Mulder, and that's a no-go for so many reasons that I wouldn't know where to begin."

Mulder paused, stunned. 

"I did notice how some of the uniformed officers reacted to her.. physically. And.. I saw that your body.. also.. reacted."

The woman was beautiful when she blushed.

"I don't know whether to be insulted by the accusations, or flattered that you pay that much attention to my body." Mulder wasn't angry with her; more like angry at himself.

"It was.. difficult *not* to notice. You should know, Mulder, that her tests showed some other anomalies. I didn't bring them up earlier, because I'm not totally sold on the concept myself, but.. How much do you know about pheromones?"

Mulder smiled, slightly embarrassed to admit it. "Enough to know that my $49.99 mail-order foray into pheromone products was an abysmal failure. After my rigorous testing of three different products at half the bars in the metro D.C area, I concluded that pheromones, if they exist in humans, have little to no effect on our love lives."

"Well, there's one strain in particular which is hypothetically present in women when they're ovulating."

He began to piece together what Scully was saying. "You said Alison's bursting with eggs, and that she's been in that state for some time. Are you suggesting that she's got some super-pheromone whammy effect she can't control?"

Scully had never recovered from the initial blush, which now deepened. "I'm saying that, your experiments aside, science has not yet disproven the existence of efficacy of human pheromones. Over half of all sexual assaults occur during the victim's fertility window, and until science can provide a better explanation for that.."

"I do so enjoy when our discussions of my sex life veer off into rape; it underscores your level of trust and respect for me," he deadpanned. Mulder waited a moment, hoping the awkward tension would dissipate. Scully was apparently letting the subject drop for the time being. "So what now? What's the next step?"

Scully sighed. "I need to get out of here, and we need to try to get back into that lab. I'm convinced that whatever the doctor was doing got him into big trouble with - "

A nurse entered, accompanied by an officer. "Agent Scully, Agent Mulder. Dr. Wallerman is asking for you."

Scully patted Mulder's hand. "Go, go, I'm okay."

Mulder smiled, feeling foolish for it. "I'll bring you back a jello cup, okay?"

Scully smiled back. "Red's my favorite."

Mulder had a feeling this would be his last interview with Wallerman, and he needed to make it count.


	10. Chapter 10

"Dr. Wallerman?"

Mulder was surprised to see a priest seated by the side of the bed, but that momentary jolt subsided. The doctor looked up at the newcomer, intensely focusing on his face.

"Is she okay?"

Mulder wasn't sure if Wallerman was asking about Alison or Scully. "She's fine," he offered, wanting to save time.

The older man visibly relaxed. 

The priest seemed at a loss, unused to such situations. "He said he wanted to make a joint confession," the young man offered, "to God and to the FBI." Then, gently, "Go ahead, my son."

Mulder took a seat on the opposite side of the bed, and the uniformed officer excused himself. "What is it, doc?"

"The eggs.. Some of them are from my patients, it's true. Some.. are from their mothers. But some.. Some I got from.. others."

He hated pressing the dying for answers, but Mulder didn't own a Ouija board, so this was his best bet of getting information. "Where are your notes, your files on these eggs? What were you planning to do with them all?"

The man shook his head slightly. "Not.. me. For them. The ones who.. funded the research. I was.. storing the eggs. All I did was harvest. I was.. promised.. my daughter."

Mulder was glad to be sitting down; that statement had sent him reeling. "These people claim to have your daughter?"

"Luna.. Her name is Luna. I asked.. for proof, and they gave me.. her cells. Ova."

"And these cells matched yours? You're sure they're Luna's?"

The man nodded again. "I had to.. secret. I just wanted.. Luna.."

Who in God's name would hold a doctor's child ransom in order to coerce him into harvesting human eggs?

"When was the last time you were contacted?"

Mulder sensed the doctor rallying, trying desperately to remain conscious.

"Friday.. I was given.. a warning. Told to.. destroy the lab. I couldn't. Now it's.. too late.."

Mulder refused to accept this. "The lab is safe. The eggs are safe. Now, tell me: WHO is running this? Who are they, and how do I contact them?" If he'd been warned Friday, that was when Alison was attacked. There had to be a connection.

Wallerman was fading. "The girl.. The Duvell girl. She is their.. beacon. The others are gone; they died out. She's.. getting stronger. Perfecting. They don't need me.. anymore.. once they get.. her."

The priest was administering the last rites. Mulder felt the room spinning.

"Dr. Wallerman?"

"Michael," he wheezed.

"Michael," Mulder tried, getting a weak response. 

"Keep her safe, but .. don't get.. close. She's.. beacon."

There was nothing but the man's labored breathing and the prayers of the priest for several moments. Mulder felt sure that the man was gone, but then he spoke one last time.

"Luna.. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.. Luna.."

And then there was nothing left to be said or done.

Mulder waited a moment before crossing the room. The window, being on the fourth floor, was small, preventing escapes and would-be suicides, but it opened, and Mulder slid up the sash. The priest stumbled over his words, his eyes now meeting Mulder's.

"Godspeed," Mulder said to the outside air, then turned and left the room.

On the doctor's lifeless face was a look of regret rather than of peace.


	11. Chapter 11

Scully had discharged herself, prescription in hand. Mulder, as promised, handed her her little plastic cup of red jello, which she needed to get rid of the taste of the chalky pill. Her cheap, bland hotel room had never seemed so cozy, but almost anywhere was better than a hospital room.

"So the doctor's gone. The patients are missing or dead. Mr. Duvell's refusing to cooperate, and since Alison's still a minor, we have to respect that.."

Mulder nodded.

"Sounds like we don't have much of a case at this point."

He stopped. "You can't be serious. We can't just let this go, Scully."

They argued back on forth on the merits of staying in Freeville, until they reached a compromise.

"IF we can arrange transport of the eggs to a lab closer to home, then I'm okay with continuing tests. Since you're so convinced that the shadowy 'them' forcing a small-town doctor to harvest eggs are, in fact, extra terrestrials, the only way to fully disprove that is to test every single one." It was Scully's best offer, and Mulder knew it, but he decided to press his luck.

Mulder felt a rising sense of panic at the thought of leaving town and leaving Alison behind. "What about John Doe? And Mrs. Duvell? And now the doctor? What about those tests?"

Scully began to pack her few belongings. "I'm not the coroner. The new coroner is handling those remains, and will report his findings to the FBI as soon as he can." She sounded unconvinced, but also resigned to the grind of small-town bureaucracy.

"I still think there's more to this case, and that by leaving, we'll just be letting 'them' swoop in and do damage control."

She turned to her partner. "You're worried about her."

It was not a question. "Wouldn't you be? What kind of low-life coward attacks a girl at school? How did he get in without triggering an alarm? How did she get out of her own house all those nights without waking anyone up? Then there's the fire, and three dead adults burned by radiation with no known source. How would you explain it all?"

Scully wondered if it was too late to go back to the hospital pharmacy to get something for Mulder. "I don't know. I know that I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that alien space-rays burned those people, or the clinic, or that alien technology over-rode the alarms, or that aliens force a teenage girl to pop in and out of her home at odd hours of the night."

She busied herself with a phone call, arranging for the lab's contents to be moved to a facility in Quantico. Mulder sat in silence, idly spinning a hotel pen on its side atop the table. The motion mirrored that of his own mind, going in endless circles.

"Okay. By the time we get back, the lab's contents should be almost ready for me to get to work. I've already got two people lined up to assist me. Feel better?"

He did, but only slightly. "I still think.. You know what, never-mind. Traffic's going to be a nightmare because of the holiday, so let's just.. Let's get out of here."

She loved his passion for his work, and she respected him as a colleague and as a friend - but Scully was truly worried about Mulder's attachment to this case. Time and distance would do him good, she told herself.

Dr. Wallerman's warning echoed in her mind, and she was determined to make sure she heeded it. The case was still, technically, open, but there was a comforting finality in the snick of the closing of the door behind them.


	12. Chapter 12

August 9, 1999  
*redacted* Research Facility, Quantico, VA  
1.15pm

Scully and her team of assistants had been testing and cataloging the eggs for the past few weeks. Obtaining comparison DNA hadn't been a fun or easy process, but most of the ova had now been identified, their respective 'donors' notified, and their futures largely determined. A handful of the women had requested having their eggs moved to private storage facilities, while most had opted for their eggs to be destroyed. Scully didn't believe unfertilized eggs counted as 'people,' but was still relieved that she wouldn't be the one to ultimately dispose of them.

Mulder checked in for his usual lunch-time update.

"Scully, how's the egg hunt going?"

She smiled, despite herself. "More like an egg counting, Mulder, and you know what people say about counting your eggs."

He could hear her smile through the phone, and it mirrored on his own face. "Let's hope none of them hatch."

"I just can't believe the magnitude of that man's work. How did he find the time? And the money? And those poor women.."

Mulder knew Scully would find some of Alison's eggs. He wasn't sure how he'd known, but he'd been right.

"Any word from the Duvells?"

"No, Mulder. I sent three letters, and I left a voicemail.. Looks like her dad doesn't want to know the truth about his daughter's doctor visits, just like he doesn't want to know about so many other things in her life.."

Mulder looked at the file in front of him, the photocopies of Freeville newspaper clippings he'd tracked down each time a kid went missing or died, the leaflet from Mrs. Duvell's memorial service, the graduation ceremony photo from Freeville High.. Scully read into his silence.

"You've got that damned folder out again, haven't you?"

"Yeah, Scully. I keep going back to this one."

"You're obsessing. It's not healthy."

"Neither is radiation poisoning," he volleyed back.

"That was a mild, mild case, and I'm fine. I finished the full course of medication." She didn't sound convinced, even to herself.

"Have you had a full check-up since then, just to follow up?"

Scully couldn't help herself. "Are you worried I'm suddenly going to be full of alien super-ova?"

Mulder closed the file. "'Alien Super-Ova'? Isn't that that new band I saw on MTV?"

"Ha ha. I'll get around to seeing the doctor, I promise. Any day now."

Scully adjusted the microscope slide, bringing it into focus. 

"You'd better." Mulder felt the vibration of call waiting against his cheek. "Alright, I gotta go. I'll check in with you tomorrow."

"Okay, Mulder. And Mulder?"

"Yeah?," he answered, flipping through the file again.

"Put it away."

How did she always know?


	13. Chapter 13

August 10, 1999  
FBI Headquarters  
Quantico, VA  
10.32am

Mulder had felt a cloud hanging over him, the weight of it nearly keeping him pinned to his bed. Car trouble on the way to work had forced him to abandon the vehicle to the capable hands of Pete's Expert Tow Service, Scully picking him up en route to the research facility and dropping him off at the office. He hated being apart so much of the time, but he wasn't qualified to assist in the lab.

The call had come in just as he'd started his third cup of coffee in an attempt to shake off the funk he was in.

"Agent Mulder," he'd said, wondering if this was going to be the other shoe dropping, the thing that let him know how much trouble was headed his way.

"Agent Mulder, this is Denise Richardson of the Freeville Department of Child Services. I have an Alison Duvell here who has you listed as an emergency contact."

He dropped his cup of coffee, the hot liquid baptizing his sensible left shoe before blessing the carpet. "Is she okay?"

A red warning light was flashing inside his brain, but Mulder couldn't see it.

"She's unharmed, but we have a.. situation." As the case worker hesitated, Mulder could hear a quiet, restrained sobbing going on in the background, and his gut clenched.

"Could you put Alison on the line?" Pause. "Please?"

The phone was handed to the girl. "Agent Mulder?"

"It's me. What's happened?"

She took in a shaky breath. "I - I didn't know who else to call. I knew when you guys left that, that, something would go wrong.. It's my dad. He's - he's - "

A fresh wail of raw grief filled the air, crackling down the line and hitting Mulder hard. Ms. Richardson came back on the line.

"I shouldn't have let her try to talk; she's still in shock. Mr. Duvell had an accident. Alison is now without a legal guardian."

Legal guardian? F*ck.

"I know it's short notice, and if you can't do it, I'm sure we could find a temporary placement for - "

"I'm on my way," Mulder interrupted. "She's not going to foster care; she's been through enough. I'll take her into protective custody."

Ms. Richardson gave him the address of her office, and Mulder hung up the phone.

A hand on his shoulder stopped Mulder in his tracks. As he turned to identify its owner, Mulder felt a mixture of relief, gratitude, and confusion. Scully and Skinner were there, side by side; he hadn't even sensed their approach.

"Agent Mulder, you're not leaving just yet. Agent Scully has made some significant findings relating to your case, as well as to another X File. You'll be briefed on the way to the lab."

"The lab?"

Scully nodded. "Mulder, Alison's different to other girls. She's.. enhanced. I got her latest lab results from Freeville, and while her eggs had disintegrated, taking her out of danger, they've since multiplied again."

He was a little lost. "What else? What aren't you telling me?"

Scully edged closer. "We.. have reason to believe that your.. response to her - really, men in general's response to her - is also.. enhanced."

Mulder was incredulous. "Pheromones? What, like those tacky 'attract a mate' product adds in the back of..? Come on, you gotta be kidding me. We went over that notion, and you were undecided."

Scully certainly seemed serious. "This is a sensitive case, Mulder. We'll need to prepare you before you head back to pick up Alison."

Skinner chimed in. "And you're not going to be taking her home. We have reason to believe her life is in more danger than ever, so the two of you will be moved to a secure location. Mr. Duvell's accident appears to be a cover-up; the cause of death was most likely radiation burns."

Scully agreed. "The injuries appear to have occurred shortly after death. We'll know more soon, but for now, Alison needs to be kept safe, somewhere no one outside of the FBI can find her."

"Please tell me there's a secret FBI bunker in Freeville," Mulder joked.

Skinner set him straight. "Not Freeville, Mulder. The New Mexico desert."


	14. Chapter 14

August 9, 1999  
*redacted* Research Facilitiy  
Quantico, VA  
11.22am

Scully drew back the plunger of the syringe, filling the body of it with the amber liquid from the glass vial. After ensuring that the fluid reached the five mil line, she discarded the vial and flicked the syringe to dispel air bubbles. 

Seated nearby, Mulder rolled up his sleeve. "So what's in the needle, doc?" He tried to come up with something wittier, but his nerves and fatigue got the better of him.

Scully swabbed a patch of Mulder's arm with an alcohol pad, matting the downy hair to his skin and leaving that sterile, chemical smell. Mulder had a beautiful complexion, even in this light, Scully found herself thinking. Shaking it off, she focused on the task at hand. "This is a drug developed by a top-secret research facility within the CDC - a variant of Depo Provera. It's a libido depressant, commonly used to treat.."

She trailed off, wishing she hadn't said anything serious, wishing she'd made a joke or issued generic reassurances.

Mulder had to know, now that the substance was entering his muscle. "Used to treat..?"

She sighed, the plunger now fully depressed, the syringe empty. She hoped the liquid didn't burn, but noticed Mulder's flinch, along with the slight scowl. "Sex offenders."

The truth, the thing Mulder prized and pursued above all else, could be so ugly sometimes.

"Gee, thanks, doc. You really know how to stroke a man's ego," Mulder said, fighting the urge to rub the injection site before allowing Scully to place a band-aid over it.

"Safety first," she said, giving Mulder a pointed look as both of their minds snapped back to that day in the hospital hallway, when Scully had first noticed Mulder's response to the Duvell girl.

\--------------------------

Having collected an exhausted but relieved Alison from Freeville, Mulder was being driven in an unmarked van to the next leg of their journey. The final destination was a New Mexico bunker.

Just the word - 'bunker' - was enough to send a chill down his spine. He was old enough to remember the Cold War; Alison would've been in elementary school when the Iron Curtain fell. God, that made him feel old.

Scully was staying at the lab, finishing the egg testing. Mulder missed her already, but he had that odd sense of anticipation again, and was too keyed-up to worry much about his partner's absence for long.

Scully had insisted on two female agents being part of the transport team, much to Mulder's amusement. He was outnumbered by women in this van, three of them to two men (himself and one other male agent). One of the women sat in the back between himself and Alison, while the other woman and the male agent occupied the cab. Mulder felt like cargo, idly wondering what immigrants would make of his trip FROM legitimate society and INTO inhospitable desert, a backwards migration. 

Alison said little on the way there, though he could sense she was bursting to talk. Poor kid wasn't even allowed to wait until after her father's funeral. According to Skinner, Alison had been at home during the accident, but had received several hang up calls corresponding to the time of his death. Some calls were silent; others, full of static, or even fax machine noises. He asked her how she'd slept the night before, and her pale stare and raccoon eyes told him she'd found herself on another nocturnal adventure.

Mulder knew they were going to have to address his theory, once they were alone together.

Looking at Alison again, feeling things he shouldn't, he hoped the shot Scully had given him was worth the sting. 

\-----------------------------------------------

The van ride had taken them to a small, privately-owned airfield in West Virginia. From there, a chartered plane took the small team to the New Mexico desert, landing in the exact middle of nowhere. By the time they arrived, it was dark, hiding the beauty of the place and giving an eerie, other-worldly look to the terrain.

Alison roused from her nap as they touched down. She looked out the window, then slumped into her seat like someone about to walk the last mile. Mulder wondered whether she felt like she was being rescued, or imprisoned. 

This was where they'd be staying - for how long, Mulder wasn't sure. He felt that things would come to a head in the next day or so, and at any rate, Alison would be a legal adult by midnight the next day. In order to be kept against her will after that, the government would have to charge her with something - or break its own laws. Mulder didn't want to think about that, especially not as a member of the Bureau.

Just as they were exiting the plane, Mulder's cell phone trilled. "Scully?"

"Can you hear me? I wasn't sure you'd have signal.."

"Barely. What's going on?"

She hesitated. "Mulder, I ran tests on the last batch of eggs."

"That's great, Scully. I mean, it's great that you've finished, right?"

Another pause. "There's something you should know."

She was still looking at the DNA comparison print-outs, still in disbelief.

"Okay.. I'm ready. What is it?"

"There were ova present which have DNA in common with you."

Mulder stopped, and Alison looked at him to see whether or not she should panic.

"Excuse me?"

"They're not from your mother, and obviously you don't have any eggs... Mulder, we think these are your sister's."

Mulder momentarily forgot how to breathe. The other agents were scouting for the entrance to the bunker, fiddling around with a metal detector in the dark while Alison shivered in fear and cold.

"Mulder?"

"Scully... I can't.. I can't even.."

Why was he here, hours away in the desert, when his sister's eggs - his SISTER'S EGGS - were waiting in a lab in Virginia? 

"Are they viable? I mean, are they fresh enough to indicate that - ?"

"Mulder, you're breaking up. H-hello? Are you there?"

Mulder glanced at his shadow, aka Alison, wondering if her proximity was causing the phone to short out.

"Mulder? MULDER?"

The battery died, the phone powering down.

He handed it to one of the other agents.

The notion that his sister was alive recently enough for her eggs to be harvested, and possibly still alive somewhere right now, gave him an adrenaline surge stronger than five cups of coffee, mixed in with the most dangerous substance known to humanity: hope. He would follow up on Scully's findings as soon as he could, but in that moment, there was nothing he could do about the situation.

For now, he had one goal and one goal only: to protect this girl at any cost.


	15. Chapter 15

The descent was slow, Mulder going first to ensure, for his own peace of mind, that the structure was still sound before allowing Alison to enter. A tiny part of his brain, perhaps his inner child, also wanted to make sure there was no one lying in wait within its depths. The driver of the van - Mulder didn't recall his name - followed behind, but was all too happy to retreat back to the surface once Mulder was satisfied that the coast was clear.

Alison hated every rung of the ladder which drew her into the belly of the earth. She was on the cusp of becoming a legally-recognized adult, but in that moment, all she wanted was to be tucked into her bed in her too-small room by her overbearing parents, and to fall asleep in that weighted blanket of false security. Alison wanted to wake up to find it had all been a dream, or even that she was merely delusional. At this point, even a lifetime of regimented psych meds sounded more appealing than facing whatever reality had in store for her.

Selfish. Fruitless. Desperate. Her thought patterns were all that and more, and Alison felt sick as the metal door was bolted shut on the outside as well as from within. The metal clang echoed through her body, making her weak at the knees.

Mulder had been briefed on the standard operating procedures during their flight, and it was now his task to make sure Alison understood the basics, just in case something happened to him while they were down there.

"What could happen to you in the middle of nowhere when only a handful of people know where you are?," she wanted to know.

"Well, if I, I dunno, had a heart attack, or choked on a sunflower seed, or went totally insane. You'd need to know how to summon help from the surface, right?"

She knew he was joking, or trying to. Wasn't he? 

Mulder took her on a tour of the bunker, emphasizing the safest areas, giving her ideas for hiding spots. "If anything happens to me, just sit tight in one of these spots until help arrives." 

Alison heard his words, but they weren't enough. "And what if something 'happens' to you because somebody makes it happen? What am I supposed to do then?"

Mulder had considered this, but hadn't wanted to broach the topic. "Then you'll need to take this from me. If it's no use to me anymore, you'll use it to defend yourself." Her eyes widened as she stared at the gun still holstered to his hip. Her mouth was bitter, tasting of metal, as though .. No. That was no way to be thinking. It was obscene, insane, totally off-limits.

"I don't know how to .. to use one." Her elementary school friend, Stefan, had learned to shoot, but her parents had seen to it that she was no longer allowed to play at that boy's house once they knew the parents kept guns there.

He reassured her. "In that sort of situation, there really is no wrong way to shoot someone. Just don't stop until you've 'neutralized the threat'. Understand?"

She paled, but nodded. "Yeah. I think so. I like that phrase; it's a nice way of saying 'kill someone.'"

He explained that he'd be in regular contact with agents on the surface via typed code, and that if he missed two consecutive check-ins, a specialized Bureau search and rescue team would be dispatched to retrieve her. Mulder made her work the comms panel, watching her complete the process several times before he was satisfied that she'd mastered it, despite the fact that Alison had gotten it right on her first try. He couldn't afford to take any unnecessary risks. 

The bunker was a far cry from her usual creature comforts, but she knew it would have to do. The interior hadn't been updated since construction in the late sixties, and the place was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint, maybe even a few art prints or posters to make it feel less, well, prison-y. Mulder hoped that Alison wasn't the claustrophobic type; being underground could break a spirit faster than most forms of torture Mulder had experienced. 

Sleeping arrangements were laid out, with Mulder's smaller room located across a narrow hallway from her own, larger, space. The emergency light system ran on solar power, and Mulder was amused by the girl's reaction when he pointed out that the lights would outlast an apocalypse. She seemed to want to say something, perhaps point out some flaw in his thinking, but fought the urge.

It was disorienting, not being able to see the color of the sky to gauge the time of day or night, but Mulder knew it was now late. He offered her some of the granola bars he'd brought, and she took one, gratefully. With that, it was time to go to their separate quarters for a few hours' sleep.

Once she was settled in her room, and after the sounds of before-bed preparations had ceased, Mulder ventured to the subterranean shaft, looking up at the dark, dense door. What would it take for someone to force it open?, he wondered. What would he do if he woke to find her missing, somehow transported to the surface while they slept? How long could she survive, alone and exposed to the elements? Mulder changed into pajama bottoms, opting to wear his undershirt and keeping his service piece on the stand beside him. Images of the future, ranging from the probable to the fantastical, wore him down into an uneasy sleep.


	16. Chapter 16

The night passed uneventfully, as far as either of them could tell. At 6.11 am, Mulder woke with the first beep of his alarm, shuffling to the comm panel to transmit that all was well. So far, so good.

Then it hit his coffee-deprived brain: Today was her birthday. What a way to spend such a milestone - newly orphaned, no friends, no luxuries, and no idea what the hell the next chapter of her life would or could be. 

Still, she was alive. She was safe. Those were gifts in themselves.

Alison watched him prepare his MRE, copying him in order to heat her own. Mulder couldn't read her; she seemed a little dazed again. He could only imagine the emotional roller coaster she was experiencing.

The quiet couldn't last forever. Like two inmates forced to share a cell, there was bound to be a breakdown sooner or later, for humans, Mulder knew, were not typically solitary creatures. In the absence of any alternatives, the pair would have to talk. He tried to push away thoughts of other things cellmates sometimes did together. Tried, with varying degrees of success.

Mulder commented that he was grateful that their rations had been refreshed - about the only noticeable update since the bunker's last use in the late '80s during the Soviet panic. "My rule is: Never eat anything that's older than you are. I mean, twenty-year-old ration packs sound awful, don't they?"

She offered a half-smile at his joke. Mulder watched as Alison produced a shaker of salt, shaped like a tiny white cat, and sprinkled some of the stuff over her bland food.

"Do you always carry salt with you?," he had to know. "Or just when you travel?"

She looked down, sheepish. "I read somewhere that it's good for cleansing spaces of bad energy and entities. I've gotten into the habit of putting a ring of it around my bed at night, a little on the windowsills and the threshold.. You think it's stupid, huh?"

"Hey, it's worth a try," he offered, and, although skeptical, he was sincere.

She pushed the shaker down the mess bench towards him, and he took it with thanks. 

"I got up and put a little salt in each of the rooms. Or areas. Or whatever they're called down here."

Mulder stopped chewing for a moment. She'd gotten up while he slept, moved through the entire bunker, and he hadn't heard anything?

"I guess it didn't work. I walked out of my room just fine."

Luckily, she took it in good humor, as was his intent.

The meal was brief, the food holding little appeal, even with the added salt.

"What made you choose this job?," Alison asked, wondering how many people - women in particular - had used that line on Mulder as an ice-breaker.

Mulder thought carefully before answering. He'd gone over it so many times in his own mind, and, as Alison had surmised, he'd been asked to voice it aloud repeatedly, justifying, explaining, defending. Why the Bureau, and why, specifically, the X Files? 

"I had a sister. I have a sister," he corrected himself. "She disappeared on my watch, under strange circumstances, and the case has never been solved. I guess it made me question everything I thought I knew about life, about fate, about the universe.." He trailed off, unprepared for the emotional surge threatening to overwhelm him. Was it due to the subject matter, the audience, or a combination of the two?

She cocked her head to one side. "So why not go into a missing-persons division, or a sex trafficking division or something?" She regretted implying that Mulder's sister had been trafficked, but, well, what did she know? Nobody knew what had happened, making her theory as valid as any other.

"I don't think she ran away. I also don't think she was taken by.. You know what, I shouldn't be talking about this." Mulder omitted the last two words, 'with you,' but Alison felt them. They hung in the air, heavy with pain.

"I'm sorry. I won't bring it up again." She waited a few moments, hoping he'd soften once more. "What do you think happened to ME?"

Mulder knew he had to be careful, but he also knew she deserved to be listened to and believed, and he was willing to offer up his theories in reciprocity. "I'm not sure."

Alison seemed taken aback. "No theories at all? A smart man like you? Just, try me. I won't laugh. Promise." She crossed her heart, and Mulder almost smiled. Sam used to - no. Shake it off. Every damsel in distress was not Sam. 

Alison, like a prospector finding a nugget, was determined to dig for more of him. "I think I'm being targeted by someone who wants to use me. Like, breed me. Why else would someone pump me full of hormones and douse me in pheromones? If they just wanted me dead, there are more efficient ways to achieve that."

It had been difficult for her to say it out loud, Mulder knew. He owed her some acknowledgement, or support, or.. something.

"I think you're right. But the who and the why are still unknown. You should know that Dr. Wallerman confessed to playing God. We aren't sure how, or how many of the women were willing participants, but the man had hundreds of women's eggs stored beneath his clinic. He claimed, just before he died, that he was forced to do it. Someone was holding his daughter hostage."

Their eyes met, and suddenly the few feet of distance seemed like too much and not enough all in one moment. Alison felt a chill run along the surface of her skin, skittering like a spider and making her more aware than ever of her body and the weight of it, holding her down in this nightmare.

"I don't get it. Whatever 'they' did to me, it healed me in some ways, even made me superior. I got smarter; my skin cleared up, and my spine straightened out. Everything seemed to be getting better in my life, except the night episodes. But then I got screwed up in other ways. If these people or beings are so advanced, why and how did it go so badly wrong?"

Mulder looked at his hands - his empty, useless hands. He had no answer for that. Human error, or alien error? WAS it an error, or was it deliberate? There was another long silence.

"Your partner, Agent Scully.. She thinks I'm dying, doesn't she?"

Mulder offered no denials.

"She thinks I should be spayed, right? Just get it all yanked out, all my baby-making parts, all my eggs.."

Mulder took a hard swallow. So much for a young woman to deal with at once, and all too soon, every decision would be on her own shoulders.

"I think you have options, Alison. There are ways around fertility issues, like IVF, or surrogacy. Even adoption." He felt especially cruel bringing that up, seeing as Alison had just been orphaned, and knowing, as he did, that the Duvells hadn't been - couldn't have been - her biological parents.

She shook her head. "I shouldn't worry about it. They'll never let me see any of my babies. I'm not in control of my own body, which means I'm not in control of my own life."

Mulder sat up, feeling she was on the verge of something crucial. Victims often had relevant information of which they weren't even consciously aware, so he needed to pay close attention. "Why do you say that?" Had she remembered something?

Alison met his gaze again. "I just.. know. You ever just 'know' something, Mulder? I have, and I'm almost always right. The times I go against my intuition, I end up regretting it."

He did. There were plenty of times he'd just known something, an aha moment, with no satisfactory logical explanation for HOW he knew. The finality and certainty of her words felt like a lead weight in his gut, and he hoped she was wrong, but had nothing with which to refute her assertions. "Yeah. Sometimes I just 'know' things."

She looked at him differently as she processed this information, relaxing slightly. "You think it's aliens, don't you." Her words were quiet, but they echoed like a live round hitting the walls. 

"To what are we referring?"

"Your sister's disappearance. My episodes and my attack. My parents' deaths. Even some of the times when you just know something. You think aliens are behind it all."

He felt too exposed. "Maybe we should think about something else. Or.. We could see if the radio will pick up any stations."

She scoffed. "Underground?"

"Yeah. We've got UGR, underground radio. It's typically only used in mines, but it might, barely, pick up something other than emergency channels.."

He busied himself dusting it off and fiddling with the dials. As he scanned the frequencies, finding fluctuating static, they heard the words, high and tinny like an EVP:

'You.. are.. ours. Not.. theirs.. Ours.."

Mulder tried to tune in, to clarify the transmission, but only succeeded in amplifying an ear-splitting screech, akin to if a fax machine and nails on a chalkboard had had a baby. Alison covered her ears as Mulder fought to shut off the device, finally succeeding.

The two of them stared at one another again as they recovered from the aural invasion. "I think it's bad luck, us being down here together. Each of us has a tendency to attract weird stuff - like that."

Mulder said nothing. He didn't need to.


	17. Chapter 17

Mulder suggested a game of cards, something simple like Old Maid or Go Fish, and Alison chose the latter. As they played, she told him more about her life.

"I was - my family and I - we were supposed to be spending this week on a little houseboat off the coast of Cornwall." She was fighting to keep her tone light, and Mulder pitied her, unable to grieve in the normal way, having to postpone her pain as she hid for her own safety.

He was intrigued. "Oh? What's in Cornwall?"

She laid down her hand of cards, exposing them, and Mulder, not one to cheat, looked intently at his own. "Well, nothing, usually - but this year, on my birthday, there's a total eclipse, and Cornwall is the best place to get a good view of it - other than from space, of course. It's where the first signs of it will be visible." Alison spoke about it with a reverence which touched Mulder's inner nerd. "There won't be another eclipse this perfect for at least a century. And then there's the blood moon; I so wanted to.." As the girl spoke about her sense of loss regarding the birthday eclipse, Mulder sensed how it was tied up with the greater losses she had just endured. This was about so much more than the chance to see the sun blacked out against the sky for a few minutes.

He could remember turning eighteen, how momentous it had been for him. He was a little envious of how loved Alison had been, how far her parents - her, presumably adoptive, parents - had been willing to go to make her day special in a way which meant something to her. Would his own parents have indulged him to such a degree? Would they have indulged his sister like that?

Alison seemed embarrassed, trailing off as she slid her gaze to the floor. She was hours away from being a legal adult, and yet she still had so much of that youthful insecurity. Mulder set down his cards, pushing up from the floor to a standing position before offering her his hand. Confused, she took hold, rising to stand with him.

"I can't get you to Cornwall, Alison, or even to the surface - but I may be able to do something to help you get a glimpse of it."

With that, Mulder led Alison down a narrow corridor, his hand still tingling from her brief touch.

\---------------------------------

The room was small, designed to barely accommodate a team of three, with just enough space to stand. 

"A periscope?," she asked, dubious.

"Well, it hasn't been used in a while, but it may still work." He wiped off the lens with his cuff, peering into it to try to get his bearing as he adjusted the controls. It certainly sounded like the contraption was moving towards the surface, but there was no one up there to check. Mulder wondered how much trouble he'd be in with the Bureau for raising the periscope, then decided he didn't care. A week without a reprimand seemed incomplete, somehow; it had become part of his routine.

"Okay.. I think.. that's.. it." Satisfied that the positioning was as good as it was going to get, he stepped back, careful to keep what distance was available to him. Alison stood there, so Mulder gestured towards the device. "Go on. Take a peek."

She leaned in, resting the lower end against her forehead. Sure enough, the moon was visible, clear and high in the desert sky. "It's.. oh, wow. It's beautiful." The desert landscape was bathed in the glow, and Alison felt that at any moment a roadrunner might zip by on its nightly run. Thinking of old Looney Tunes episodes brought a lump to her throat; that era was over. She had to grow up. 

Mulder, for his part, envied her childlike enchantment with something so simple. He wished he could look at the night sky and take things at face value, rather than having his mind flooded with fake-moon-landing conspiracy theories and alien autopsy videos, or the nagging suspicion that the United States Government was going to take possession of all weapon-worthy radioactive space rocks at the earliest opportunity. Would he ever have that simple joy again? Would Alison?

After several minutes of enjoying the spectacle, the girl pulled away. "Thank you."

"It's not much of a birthday present," he conceded.

"It's a little piece of normalcy in a weird situation. And, not just for that. For saving me - or trying to."

That fear and uncertainty still hadn't left her voice. "You're safe here." He said it, hoping it was true, hoping he could keep the implicit promise held within his words.

"They'll never leave me alone," Alison said softly. 

Mulder suddenly felt old - older than his years. "I'll do everything in my power to protect you. We all will." He really had to watch himself; he was getting too emotional, and a slip of the tongue in confined quarters would not be easily remedied.

She was still skeptical. "It's late. I should get to bed."

Mulder walked her to her room, making sure she was secure before retreating to his post. Some inner prompting urged him to leave the door open, and he lay awake for a while, staring at her closed door.

As midnight arrived, he whispered, "Happy birthday, Alison." Mulder hoped she was asleep and having pleasant dreams.


	18. Chapter 18

A low rumbling woke him. It took a moment for Mulder to remember where he was and why he was there, but the sight of a shadow moving in the doorway sent his adrenaline into overdrive, and he leapt to his feet, now fully awake.

"Mulder?"

The voice stopped him cold, one hand on his gun. Mulder exhaled.

"Alison. What's - what's goin' on?"

"I dunno. There's.. I heard a loud noise outside. I got scared.."

If this were a porno, Mulder thought, she'd ask to get into my bed. What a horrendously inappropriate thought.

The rumble sounded again. This time, the building vibrated. So much for the thunder hypothesis Mulder was counting on.

"Mulder.."

This time, his name sounded like a light moan, and something tightened deep within his chest. That shot Scully gave him didn't seem to be working; if he survived the night, he'd have to give some strongly-worded negative feedback to the research team..

"Alison, it's okay. We'll.. We'll go deeper underground. There's one more level below this - "

She balked, shaking her head no. "I don't want that. I can't bear it. Just.. Can we go look at what's outside? Maybe if I see it, I won't be scared anymore."

The periscope room was as good a place as any, he conceded. Maybe they'd get some answers.

In the close quarters of the observation room, Mulder could smell her - the fear, but also the arousal. He adjusted the periscope to allow for the best view, his body inches from hers. Despite her height, Mulder still cast her in shadow, and his muscular frame contrasted with her softer form. "Can you see anything?," Mulder asked in the dimness, wondering whether Alison would notice the husk in his voice.

She trembled, despite the adrenaline and the body heat rolling off of Mulder. "I saw a flash, like lightning. There's another one. And again." 

Alison wanted to believe all she'd heard was thunder, or lightning striking somewhere in the desert, but that was too easy, too safe. 

"I'm so afraid," she confessed. Losing her parents had been awful, but she hadn't fell truly alone until this moment. Was this going to be her future - hiding out in remote locations from an unknown threat? What would happen to her when Mulder and Scully closed the case, or got reassigned without the case being solved? 

"They've found me. I know it. I told you; I'm bad luck. They're going to take me and do whatever they want to me. I'm the last one; they won't let me get away. They killed my doctor; they killed my parents; I have no family left, and now.."

Mulder knew this was the shittiest of timing, but he felt that, as an adult, Alison had the right to know. "I was going to tell you something in the morning, but I'm going to tell you now," he began, part of his mind screaming at him to shut up, finding that he couldn't. "Mark and Diana were not your birth parents."

She looked at him, and the shock was muted, passing in a moment. He braced himself for tears, or even for her to lash out in anger, but she did neither. Instead, she stunned him into helpless silence.

In a choked whisper, she asked the most basic question in humanity: "Who *am* I?"

Mulder was trying to clear his thoughts and formulate some words of comfort, but he ran out of time. Alison turned her body into the shelter of his, and his arms wrapped loosely around her without conscious effort. From this position, he could smell her hair, the faint mix of apples and lemons, and could feel her heart racing. Mulder realized his own was racing, too. This felt too good, too intense for him to possibly survive. Sure, it had been a while since he'd had a successful 'date,' but his reaction went deeper than that. Alison was different, and with every second they spent in close physical contact, he felt that attachment grow.

"Alison, I'll stay here and keep watch, but you should go back to your room." 

One of her hands slid between them, resting over his left pec as she nuzzled her cheek into his right. "Please don't leave me alone tonight."

Mulder wanted to groan. Since his early teens, he'd been waging a war against his own baser instincts, and, to his credit, he'd won more battles than he'd lost - but this was a new level. Something about this girl, this woman, was pushing him to breaking point. "You know it's for both of our sakes. You know neither of us is thinking clearly; we're both in a heightened state - "

"Mulder," Alison whispered, and there was so much emotion in those two syllables. His vision was tinged with red, not in anger, but as a warning. This wasn't safe. He should never have been given this assignment, but he was the only agent Scully trusted enough to resist this girl. Oh, Gd, Scully...

"They'll never leave me alone. You know it as well as I do. They - whoever they are - they sent that man to rape me, maybe kidnap me. They killed my parents. They've made me into a monster, changing my body to drive men insane.." She pulled back enough to look up into his face, probably seeing the struggle there, the desire and the shame. "You can save me. You can."

Mulder was as hard as he'd ever been, thankful for the few inches of air between them, hoping she hadn't felt his arousal. "I can't.. I'm not sure what you're asking of me, but I can't do it. There are certain lines that shouldn't be crossed.."

Her hand slid down, her fingers hooking into his waistband, her palm resting flat against his belly. Mulder's cock jumped at the touch, and he held his breath for a moment, praying she'd stop, then praying she wouldn't, then hating himself. Alison's other arm locked around his torso, stronger and tighter than he would've expected, contrasting with the gentle possessiveness of her first hand. There was no way out of this embrace without getting rough with her, and Mulder's fight or flight instincts were split down the middle, giving her an opening. Reaching his mouth with her own, Alison swallowed his next feeble protest. 

Mulder's gut rumbled, his defenses detonating like demolition charges inside him. The taste of her was unlike anything he'd ever experienced, and he felt faint, almost drunk.

"I don't want to die here like this. I don't want to live without knowing how it feels.. how it feels to.."

No. No, no, no, no, she was not going to help him play out every middle-aged man's nubile fantasy. This was not happening. He was dreaming, or dead, or trapped in a spaceship being experimented on; he was definitely not giving in to this woman, this mystery. Not now. Not ever.

"If I'm not .. 'intact,' maybe they won't take me. Don't you think it's what they've been leading up to, what they've been waiting for?"

Did he believe that? Was there a UFO hiding beneath the eclipse, waiting for some arbitrary human age of consent before spiriting her away to be used as a living incubator? 

Mulder tried to find words, but his vocal cords had ceased functioning, other than to emit the most guttural sounds as Alison's mouth peppered his ears and throat with kisses. She was literally hot to the touch, to the point where even hovering his hand a few inches from her skin's surface allowed him to feel the heat.

Dr. Wallerman's warnings; Scully's warnings; even Alison's warnings - had all foreshadowed this moment. 

Miles away, unable to sleep, Scully had run more tests, although, in a nice change of pace, these had nothing to do with eggs. Mulder's DNA file was open before her, Scully comparing the latest sample, taken just after his injection, to his last scrape from two months ago. His testosterone was always higher than average, but now, it was at an almost dangerous level. 

Going on a hunch, Scully introduced a few cells from Mulder's newest sample to the latest sample from Duvell. The microscope seemed to heat up from the force of the reaction, the cells fusing into something the likes of which Scully had never seen. These weren't cells designed for sexual reproduction, so the fact that they interacted at all was abnormal.

It hit her then. 

Scully raced to the phone, not caring who she woke up or what difference time zones made. She needed to reach the field agents in New Mexico, praying she wasn't too late.

"Get me Assistant Director Malone." *pause* YES, it's urgent!" … "Malone, this is Agent Dana Scully. I need you to evacuate Agent Mulder from the bunker, NOW. .. Because I have reason to believe that Alison has been genetically enhanced to specifically target Mulder. No, not to kill him - at least I hope not. .. I don't have time to give a science lesson, sir, I just need him out of there before this situation goes nuclear. I'm aware of your opinion of my department, sir, but this isn't the time to - "

The sound of being chastised and hung up on burned in her ear.

"Almost a five-hour flight to the damn desert," she muttered, knowing Skinner was going to rake her ass across the coals for chartering a plane without prior approval, and not caring.

If her New Mexico higher-ups weren't prepared to listen to reason over the phone, she'd have to deliver the evidence in person.

"Please, Mulder, don't let me down," she prayed, meaning it in ways she wasn't prepared to deal with.


	19. Chapter 19

In that moment, she was every woman he'd ever desired. The smell of her was driving him insane, the ground shaking no more dramatically than his legs as he used his runner's strength to hold both of their bodies upright. Her face became a blur, morphing into an older version of her, then into an impossibly beautiful creature. She was the mother-goddess, the summation of all womankind. She was the creator, and destroyer, of worlds - of life itself. Galaxies formed and expanded within her eyes and between her thighs. Alison's hands moved once more to his chest, burning him through the fabric; he heard his name, a hushed plea - "Mulder" - only it was Scully's voice now, Scully's desperate need for him to fill her. 

Mulder's hands cradled the weight of her breasts, her nipples pressing into his palms as they hardened. "Yes..," she whispered. "Save me.." 

Part of him - a small, increasingly agonized part - cried 'no.' Call it his conscience, or his better angels, or his last sliver of sanity - but whatever it was, it was no match for the pull he felt towards the girl. He could not stop; this was to be the death of him, and Mulder embraced that end, that tantalizing promise of peaceful oblivion just out of reach. The act which had given him life - the one which began life for most people - would be his doom, and there was a poetic symmetry to that. 

He took her mouth again, hating himself for it. She encouraged him, whimpering against his ministrations, her young body needy and impossibly hot. Alison wanted this. It was more than a mere survival tactic - wasn't it? 

He wondered if she was ill. Her skin was feverish, her breath sweet; he had half a mind to take her to the shower, to try to bring down this awful burning heat which threatened to consume them both. As if reading his mind, she dug her fingers into his arms. "Stay with me. Right here.. right here.." 

One hand slid down her belly, then lower still, brushing the downy curls he knew must be just out of sight within her pajama bottoms. Alison threw one leg up and around his hip, forcing his fingers forward, scalded by her sex. The smell of her assaulted him, and he groaned; so slick, so needy.. 

Mulder wanted to be gentler, conscious of her inexperience, but each time he slowed down or positioned himself to go less deeply, she drew him back in and sped him along. Too tight, too hot, too much; Mulder was lost inside of her. 

"Don't you want me?," she panted. He lied to himself, told himself that if he made her cum, this inferno would subside, that his need to possess her would be satiated, and that her desperation to be taken would abate. Mulder kissed her again, mimicking the act with his tongue, and she responded, her body clamping down on his probing digits. 

Alison spread herself wider for him, her body pressing against his questing fingers again and again until she came with a shout. Mulder watched her face, waiting for the fog of lust to clear, but her eyes flashed fire, hotter than before, more focused, and he knew he would give in to her. 

"Give me all of you," she murmured, her hands working to free him from his too-tight sleepwear. When he resisted, Alison simply changed tack, pressing her face to his thin shirt and licking his nipples to attention through the fabric. The shock of the sensation made his hands fall to his sides, and she seized the moment, taking him into her grip. 

"It's already gone too far. I can't do what you're asking.." A strange, feeble lie, and they both knew it. 

Alison dropped to her knees, knowing she was made for this, made for him. It had to be him; no other had made her feel this ache, this need. His hand found her hair, running through it with such tenderness as she licked and sucked him, his gentleness contrasting with her violent hunger. Every nerve ending in her body was on fire, and the mere sensation of Mulder's fingers grazing her scalp made her clench with desire. 

Mulder knew how difficult it was for him to get off this way; no matter how skilled the devotee, his body rarely cooperated past the point of no return. Alison sensed him giving in, but he needed something to tip him over the edge and into the freefall of insanity with her.

"Would you stop being a fucking federal agent for a minute and just be a man?"

With that, she sucked him in as far as he would go, butterflying with her tongue, and Mulder snapped.

He hauled her up to her feet, kissing her again, crushing the air from her lungs. "Yes.." He wasn't aware that he was the one saying it over and over, the 'yes' he'd been preparing to give her since the day they'd met. 

Alison lifted her thigh once more, hooking it in place around his body, and he slid home, making her flinch as his cock breached that final barrier. "Please," she begged, although he swore her lips did not move as she said it.

It was madness, and he welcomed it. They'd die like this, but the Bureau - Scully, in particular - would make sure his family was spared the shameful details. He wanted to slow down, to savor this, to make it memorable for both of them, but Alison wouldn't allow it.

"Give me more.. Give me everything."

He kept going, locked into her, in awe of her responsiveness. She wanted more, but time was running out.

As the girl's thumbs grazed his nipples in time with the rhythm of his name, Mulder let go, saving her and, quite possibly, humankind, but damning himself. The heat in her continued to engulf him as he pulsed his release, helpless to stop it. "Scully," he groaned; if Alison heard his indiscretion above the drum of their pounding hearts and the roar of crumbling walls, she made no outward sign of acknowledgement. 

A shaft of moonlight beamed against the concrete behind him, the dust and shifting sand blending together at their feet. They had no choice now but to surface; to remain underground would mean being crushed to death or suffocating.

Pulling apart and becoming separate entities once more elicited a groan from each of them, Alison's due to her tender state, and Mulder's due to his own self-loathing. What in the name of all that was supernatural had he just done? Scully was going to murder him when she found out. He wouldn't have to worry about being drummed out of the bureau; he was going to be tortured, dismembered, and scattered in thousands of pieces, none of them big enough to give a viable DNA sample. She could do it - she could dissect him with her surgical precision, starting on his lower extremities while he was restrained and conscious before going in for the kill. The notion of keeping this from her was somehow more ridiculous than the act itself; Scully, for all of her dismissal of telepathy, intuition etc, could read him better than he could read himself. If his need for the truth and his oath to protect Alison hadn't prevailed, Mulder could've sat down right there, spent, and let the world cave in on his head.

Alison was shaking him by the shoulders, panic in her voice. "Mulder.. This is no time to get sleepy on me. We've gotta get out of here, NOW."

He shook himself from his stupor, moving on auto-pilot. This was more familiar territory for him, fighting for his life; this was far less dangerous and less frightening than falling under the spell of an orphaned teenaged girl. The metal ladder still clung to what was left of the wall, and it was their only chance. Whatever was going on aboveground, the team would be en route by now; they'd have to leave their meager belongings and their dirty secret behind.


	20. Chapter 20

The agents sped through the desert night, hoping they weren't too late. 

The opening to the bunker was fast becoming a sinkhole, so the team began the process of unlocking the door from the outside. Sounds of life from within gave them hope, but every second counted.

As the door groaned on its hinge, Mulder handed a shaking Alison to the nearest team member, hoisting himself out behind her. They had to run, outpacing the cave-in, blinded and disoriented by the flashes of light which came every few seconds.

Mulder shouted to one of the agents to get Alison into the jeep, but the man seemed frozen to the spot, staring up at the sky like he'd never seen it before. Looking to the next man and the next, the stance repeated. Alison looked at Mulder with a mixture of longing and pity, neither of which he knew how to handle just then. He still felt the pull towards her, despite having gone limp after the most voluminous orgasm of his adult life, but the others seemed oblivious to her. It was as if Alison had ceased to exist. What had changed? She'd gone from being a magnet to men, to being almost invisible to them.

Fighting anger, Mulder began shepherding the mute mannequins away from the hole in the desert, wishing Scully was there, then being glad that she wasn't. The flashes intensified, and Mulder noticed that a patch of cacti several yards away was on fire. No; that wasn't quite right. They were glowing, disintegrating, bursting like unventilated baked potatoes in a microwave. He needed to get Alison out of here.

"Get in the jeep!," he yelled, the strange roaring sound threatening to drown him out. Sand began to swirl, forcing him to cover his face with his shirt for a moment.

When all four men had been placed into their seats, Mulder realized he would have to drive, as the others were zoned out.

Alison headed away from them, out into the desert. He watched her run as if in slow motion, almost phosphorescent in the night. Looking at the men behind him, Mulder knew he had to choose: Try to save himself and his comrades, or try to protect his charge.

He leapt from the jeep, giving chase. She was younger, stronger, faster than him, but Mulder couldn't give up. Horrified, he realized she was leading him to the spot where the lights were the most intense.

"I'm comin,' sis," he said inside of his mind. Whether in abductee status or in death, he would see her again.

Alison looked back over her shoulder, but Mulder saw no sign of recognition on her face at the sight of him. 

Desert brush flared into flame, then died, leaving shards of glass formed by the hot sand. Snippets of Old Testament accounts of pillars of salt and columns of smoke and fire in the desert flitted through his mind; he had often wondered if the chariots of fire and voices from the clouds were E.T.s.

Alison ran with singular purpose, never wavering, never slowing down. It seemed she could run forever, and Mulder knew that he definitely couldn't. Behind him, the jeep was barely visible, the men still as statues. Great.

His voice called out ahead of him, wondering if she'd hear, wondering if she'd care.

She stopped, and Mulder felt hope bloom within his chest. Maybe she'd snapped out of her daze; if he could only catch up to her in time - 

Several yards to go, and Mulder was momentarily blinded by the biggest flash of all. The force of it knocked him backwards; the sound was so loud, all else seemed silence in comparison. When his vision cleared, he saw Alison being lifted bodily from the earth, enveloped in a beam of light. She made no discernible sound or movement, limp as a rag doll in the hand of an invisible giant, her hair spilling down behind her. 

He tried to get up, but found that his legs were wet noodles, and he had the sensation of severe sunburn over every inch of his skin.

Mulder laid there, waiting to die, waiting to live, watching the flashes become less intense and less frequent, until there was nothing but the night.

The distant roar of a jeep approaching forced him to roll over onto his front, howling with pain as he did so. As the headlights approached, he raised a hand to signal his presence, then slid into sweet oblivion.


	21. Chapter 21

*redacted* Research Facility  
New Mexico  
August 15, 1999  
2.59pm

Mulder awoke, not in a private hospital, but in the medical ward of a research lab.

As he pried open one eye, he saw the face of an angel. Scully blinked away a tear, relieved that Mulder was back.

"We have to stop hanging out like this," he said, his voice raw as if from screaming. Everything still hurt, but there was the definite fuzzy film of pain meds keeping it to a bearable level.

"Yeah. But thank God for government health plans, right?"

Her face held so many questions, tied up with so much loving concern, and Mulder wasn't ready to deal with either of those things.

"I failed."

Those two words said so much, so much that he didn't want to admit and she didn't want to hear. He owed her the truth, no matter the consequences of telling her.

"Mulder.. Some things are beyond our ability to control or even understand. Whatever happened in that bunker, I know.. I know that you did your best. I trust your intentions, I truly do. I'm not your judge."

He closed his eyes for a moment. "She's gone, isn't she?"

Scully nodded. "They expanded the range of the search, but, yes. It seems so. Three days of combing the desert with cadaver dogs, and they turned up nothing."

He wondered if she'd been controlled, programmed somehow to seduce him, or if she'd truly wanted him. Mulder knew he would never fully understand women.

"What's the official report say?"

"It doesn't. The case is still open, and I need you to help me fill in the gaps."

Shit.

"Do you believe she was abducted, Scully? Tracked, taken, and God knows what else?"

"I think it's possible. I'm not convinced it's little green men in flying saucers, but someone wanted Alison for their own ends, and I don't think anything we could have done would have stopped them. I don't like admitting that. I.. I shouldn't have let them send you on that assignment."

"It would've played out this way somehow." He noticed the folder beside her on the table. Scully handed it to him.

"This is what I was working on when I left Virginia to come rescue you. I got there too late, but.."

He looked at the data. Several minutes passed in silence.

"My body enhanced itself in response to Alison's?"

She seemed uncomfortable with the notion. "That's the working hypothesis."

He remembered the encounter in vivid detail, the heat of her, the all-consuming lust. Alison had believed, probably incorrectly, that 'they' wouldn't want her if she wasn't a pure specimen. There was, within him, a level of care towards her, a depth of feeling which Mulder wanted to believe was not a mere matter of bio-chemistry gone haywire. Their bond was real, if short-lived, but it paled in comparison to the emotional draw of the woman beside him. He decided then and there that, in general, physical lust was easier to compartmentalize or ignore than the less scientifically-justified impulses of humankind. Like the urge to whisper sweet nothings, or to beg at a woman's feet to be her willing slave if she'd only call him by his first name once in a while, or the craving to run his hands through silken tresses of red-but-not-too-red hair...

Mulder wondered how much Scully suspected or knew. He wondered if his partner could read him as well as Alison had read him. Most of all, he wondered how Scully would react if he confessed that *she* had been the one on his mind for much of the illicit interlude. 

The true test of Mulder's self-control was not confinement in a desert bunker with an enhanced Lolita. The true test was being able to live and breathe, moment by moment, by this woman's side, without crossing a line which could ruin their friendship forever.

"When can I get outta here?," he asked, changing the subject.

"Well, that's one more good thing about me being a doctor - I can discharge you," she smiled.

He felt too unsure of himself to try to make a wisecrack, and let the moment pass.

"C'mon, Mulder. Let's get you ready to go home."

\-----------------------------

As the pair sat opposite one another on the plane, watching the desert disappearing into the distance, Mulder shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun. 

"You don't think she's dead, do you?," Scully asked.

"No. In some ways, it might be her best option - but no. I don't think she's dead. I think she's.."

He wanted to say 'with Sam,' but what were the odds of that happening? Besides, the notion of his one-time lover meeting his missing sister was a nightmare of Freudian proportions.

"Maybe she's a pawn in some government experiment, or the human guinea pig for an alien race intent on creating hybrids. Maybe she never existed, and this was all a mass hallucination. I know which option horrifies me the most."

Scully took the bait. "Oh? Which one is that?"

"That this was all the work of crazy, power-hungry humans with delusions of grandeur. I'd sleep better at night if I could attribute the bulk of human suffering to the work of aliens, werewolves, and the occasional demon, than to have to face that within each of us lies a monster, just waiting to wake up and wreak havoc."

"You're not a monster," she said, so softly he wasn't sure he hadn't imagined it.

"I'm not sure what I am anymore." Alison's words haunted him: 'Who *am* I?'"

Scully rested a hand on Mulder's knee, unaware of the touch in her earnestness. "Fox, you're not a monster. You never have been, and you never will be."

His first name had never sounded so good. A touch on his knee had never been so loving and so erotic all at once.

Mulder knew he'd never stop searching for the truth about his sister. He knew Alison's case would become one of the files which kept him up at night. He knew he had to let go of this guilt and shame over what had happened in the bunker.

Above all, Fox Mulder knew that, sooner or later, he would have to find a way to show Scully the best version of the man he could be and hope that it was enough.


	22. Epilogue

A young woman opens her eyes, blinking at the daylight. She is bruised, and her pajamas are torn, but she is alive.

She takes a deep breath.

As her vision clears, she realizes that she is not, in fact, outdoors, but is in a large enclosed space designed to mimic familiar surroundings. The grass beneath her is too dry and prickly, the birdsong too tinny, the air too tasteless. It reminds her of a terrarium, which would make her the pet - or the specimen.

She runs full speed towards the small grove of trees designed to replicate the boundary of her parents' land. As she reaches their shade, an incredible intangible force repels her body, knocking her onto her ass. Her head buzzes and swims; she vomits, cries, then vomits again. She is tired, more tired than she has ever been in her life, yet she does not want to surrender to sleep.

The girl places her head between her knees, trying to calm herself and regulate her breathing, but the nausea hits her again and again, buffeting her like churning waves.  
Soon there is nothing left to expel, and she dry-heaves, desperately thirsty. Sleep clouds her mind, and when she awakes, she is in a loose-fitting calico dress which seems oddly familiar to her.

It hits her then: This is her aunt's maternity dress, or an exact replica of the same.

To her right, the girl spies a picnic basket; looking within, she finds tasteless imitations of her favorite foods from childhood. Her hands tear desperately at a loaf of bread, hating her need, helpless in its grip. The bottled water tastes too pure, almost clinically sterile, but it goes down easy. Nausea forces her to remain very still for much of the day, rising only to eat or drink. As the sickness abates, fatigue claims her for sleep once more.

Every time she wakes, the nausea returns. Her belly seems bloated, and alongside the seasick feeling, there are flutters of movement - several at once, in various parts of her abdomen. The skin there is stretched taut, and something - or someone - is visibly moving beneath the surface. Alison beats against the unseen barrier, screaming and screaming like a child in the throes of a tantrum, screams no rescuer will hear.

Somewhere above her, from within a deeply-camoflauged observation deck, Sam watches the newest addition to the breeding program. She places a hand over her own swollen belly, knowing that each woman's fate depends on their success in, and compliance with, the program. She knows the gestation period has been accelerating, and that nausea is the least of Alison's worries. Sam recalls her eighteenth birthday, the uncontrolled lust, the rude initiation into the world of adulthood. Alison is the last specimen from her current generation, as Sam was the last of hers. She, too, had beat against her reality and cried out for mercy, but none was given.

In space, no one can hear you scream. 

\- End


End file.
